Morning Is a Long Time Coming (6 page)

When Grandma and I reseated ourselves inside the Buick, she asked me where I would like to go for lunch. I thought about The Krystal, where you can get coffee in a large white mug for a nickel and an exceedingly small round hamburger on a square bun for only twelve cents.

After I thought about The Krystal, I thought about Grandma with her genuine diamond-in-the-ear earrings and the pearls at her neck which are simulated nothing. They are real pearls from real irritated oysters. And when I thought about all of that, I knew I shouldn’t think about The Krystal.

It’s not that I especially love eating in hamburger joints, it’s just that I don’t feel quite right about her spending a wad of money on some expensive lunch for me.

Once though when I tried to save her money, she laughed, called me, “cheapskate.” And then she asked me why I was forever trying to save her money. My answer was one of those surprise answers—I mean, surprising to me. “I’m not trying to save you money, Grandmother,” I told her. “I’m only trying to prevent you from spending it on me.”

This time, though, I decided that as long as she insists on taking me out in a, as we say in Jenkinsville, high-on-the-hog way, then I might as well choose the hog. “Well, if it’s all right with you,” I told her, “I’d really love to return to the place you took me a long time ago. The Skyway on top of the Hotel Peabody. They still have live music there, don’t they?”

As the tuxedo-suited maître d’ showed us to our table, Bobby Lawrence and his music men were playing “I’ll Get By.” The maître d’ seated us next to what The Skyway is
famous for—a circular wall of glass and if you can’t quite see the whole world from here, you can, at the very least, see our part of the world. Front Street, Mud Island, the Mississippi River, and, on the opposite bank—tah-dah—Arkansas, “Land of Opportunity,” or so it says on our license plates.

After the waiter had taken our orders, Grandmother settled back into her seat and looked me over carefully before announcing, “Now, Patricia darling, we can talk.”

“I guess we can,” I answered, thinking how I never fail to give awkward-sounding answers to what I perceive as tension-provoking statements.

“Well,” she said, still smiling.

But because I couldn’t think of a single thing to add to her smile except, perhaps, one of my own, I settled for returning it.

“Well ...” she repeated, “so, my darling, you decided yet on a college for the fall?”

I wanted to avoid saying anything that Grandma might later look back on as a lie. “I haven’t ... haven’t as yet chosen one,” I said, while staring down at the incredible whiteness of The Skyway’s linens.

“Remember September isn’t far away, darling. But don’t worry, ’cause you have plenty of time.”

I laughed at her inconsistency, but I think Grandma, who began laughing too, was only responding to my pleasure. Her laughter, like her inconsistencies, made her seem young. I began to wonder if it might not be possible to tell her something about my plans, after all. Maybe she really could understand. And I needed somebody in this world to understand. And if I did find somebody who could, I’d ask
them please ... please explain it to me.

Why can’t I just go on to college like everybody else? Certainly, I’m not going to follow through on this other wild and impossible thing? Somewhere along the line I’m pretty sure I’ll stop myself.

Grandma began telling me about the Rhapsody-in-Blue dinner-dance next Saturday night at the Ridgeway Country Club. Then she paused a long pause before saying, “Your Aunt Dorothy found you a blind date. He’s the son of one of her friends, Estelle Lubin. What’s the
boychik’s
name?” Grandma asked just as though he were one of my old friends.

“I never met him.”

“Well, you will, darling. His name is Lubin. Marshall Lubin. A very nice boy.” She went on talking about Marshall being a college boy from the University of Alabama.

It was then that the formally attired waiter brought Grandma’s “seafood supreme” and my shrimp cocktail—ninety-five cents for only six bored shrimps lounging on a bowl of cracked ice!

She told me that she’d like to buy me a new dress for the country club dance. Then she looked at me and sighed. “I want you should have a good time at the party.”

That was sure true enough. Grandma always wanted me to have a good time, but I’m not completely comfortable with that either. Did she want me to only because I’m eighteen and that’s natural enough, or was it because—is it that she still feels sorry for me?

I remember the first Sunday after I was released from Bolton and we all drove to Memphis to see Grandma. Rushing past my mother and even Sharon, she grabbed me with a
strength that I’d never have guessed that she possessed. Then with a startling kind of abruptness, she released my arm to go dashing toward the kitchen. “Something’s burning” is what she had said, but the funny thing is I never smelled a thing.

Later, on the ride back to Jenkinsville, I thought a lot about her behavior. Finally it came to me that she must have suffered much more than embarrassment over my stay at the Bolton reformatory. I felt angry with her for trying to shield me from her suffering. Didn’t she realize that I could have helped her? Showed her that being there may have been a little bad, but it wasn’t all that terrible, for goodness’ sake!

But mainly I was angry with her because for all that time (and maybe that was the only really terrible thing) I didn’t know that anybody outside of Ruth really cared about my pain. Grandmother’s suffering would have shown me that she did.

But she’s like everybody else that way. More comfortable in expressing her anger than in exposing her sorrow. Once, I remember, she flared up at Grandpa and he said, “That’s a temper you have there.” And I caught her smiling as though she were still a young girl and Sammy Fried were nothing but a boy.

She adjusted the silk poet’s bow at her neck. “Maybe Estelle’s son ... uh ...”

“Marshall,” I supplied.

“Yes, Marshall,” continued Grandma, “could tell you all about the University of Alabama. Lots of the Jewish boys and girls from Memphis go there,” she said.

“You know, Grandma, I don’t think I would want to go
there because ...” I want to go so far away from the South. Far enough away so that nobody has ever heard my name. “... because Alabama is too much like Arkansas. I’d like to try something else. Maybe New York. Maybe Boston.”

She smiled, but it was more out of nervousness than pleasure. “So far away?”

“Well, that’s okay,” I answered, trying to set her mind at ease. “I don’t want to go to college anyway.” Suddenly I felt as though I had backed away from a lizard into the carnivorous jaws of a crocodile.

Grandma blinked as though she were struck between the eyes. “Don’t want to go to college? Get an education. Meet—”

“It’s not that I don’t want to go!” When am I going to learn to keep my mouth shut? Good Lord, I can’t trust myself with anything!

“Then you do want to go?”

“Well ... I do maybe want to go some day, but I don’t want to go yet.”

“Sooo and why not?”

“Because I think ... it’s possible that I might have other plans.”

“Oh ...” Grandma made the
oh
sound all round and all inclusive. “Such as what?” And then she peered over the table to take in an unobstructed view of my midsection. Damn! She thinks just like them. Just like my father and mother! Me, who at eighteen would have more experience filling in for one of those vestal virgins than I would for Edna Louise Jackson in the back seat of Herbie Dickinson’s Chrysler.

“Grandmother.” I called her name with the same degree of firmness that teachers sometimes use with obnoxious students. “What I am thinking about is traveling. Seeing Europe. Stuff like that.”

“Europe?”

“Well, yes, maybe.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know ... no particular reason. I guess I’ve always wanted to travel, see foreign places.”

“I’ve seen them,” she said, looking out beyond The Skyway’s glass wall. “My whole family has. For so many generations my family lived in Wieliczka. A good word and a helping hand they had for everybody.” Grandmother touched her heart. “God is my witness, there was no better family anywhere. But the best of us was Judah! To this day I remember Judah. How handsome he was! Through fifty years, I can still see my brother’s face. Time plays no tricks.

“Your grandmother remembers it all. One night a Polish soldier so drunk he couldn’t find his way back to his garrison came galloping into Wieliczka. And to the people—our friends and neighbors that we’ve known all our lives—he tells them to ‘find Jews.’

“Find Jews.” Grandma gave a faint chuckle. “I cannot stop seeing Judah’s face the moment he was beheaded.

“After that my father vowed he’d get our family to a safe place, so giving up the tailor shop, he bribed his way out of Poland and into Luxembourg.

“It wasn’t all sunshine there, either, believe me. Poppa went through hard times, we all did until he established his business, but Poppa,
alav hasholom,
was a good tailor and a
good businessman. Soon from all over Luxembourg City, the smart people began coming to his shop.
Gott’danken.

“Later my sisters Toby and Miera both married doctors and I followed young Sammy Fried to America. My sisters and I stayed close over the years. Once or twice a week we wrote; five times they came to America to visit me. Then Hitler, like a plague, marched into Luxembourg, and I never again heard from anyone.”

“I know, Grandma, I’m sorry.”

Without in any way acknowledging my belated expression of sympathy, Grandma went on talking. “My mother, my sisters, their husbands, eight children, and twelve grandchildren ...”

“I know,” I said again, but this time feeling Grandma’s sorrow for our family beginning to re-ignite my hatred for all those who had ever persecuted my people.

She looked directly at me as though she could see things I couldn’t. “You don’t know! To know is to know that the old countries are bad for the Jews. Poles, Russians, Germans, they’re all the same, not caring about right or wrong. Only doing what they’re told. And twice as fast when the instructions come from a uniform.”

She pointed to the high-school age busboy who wore gold braided epaulets on the shoulders of his red jacket. “If that pimpled boy wearing that fancy jacket would today go to Germany and order the people, God forbid, to find Jews, people would do what they were told. They would find Jews.”

“I understand that,” I answered, thinking that I would like nothing better than to spend my life personally tracking down all the Nazis that have so far escaped justice.

Grandmother looked at me with a contempt that I had never before seen on her face. “If you understood, you would not go. You are already here, Patty. In the promised land of freedom.”

“Grandmother,” I said, in a voice chilled by anger. “I’m surprised that I have to remind you of what nobody will ever have to remind me: It wasn’t one of your old countries that took away my freedom.”

6

W
ITH A TONGUE-DAMPENED
index finger, I pressed my eyelashes back against closed lids. More than once, I had seen Edna Louise do it to a count of one hundred. And you do have to give the devil her due, she really does have curly lashes. She told me that it was an important beauty secret of the movie stars, but I don’t know. Somehow, I just can’t imagine Ginger Rogers, Lana Turner, or Susan Hayward entering this world with an imperfection.

At the forty-seventh count, the door chimes resounded. “Patty darling, he’s here!” said Grandmother, whose sense of expectation equaled my own. “What’s-his-name is here!” she said while poking her head into the guest room.

“Marshall Lubin. I know. I heard the chimes.” I gave myself a long, inspecting look in the full-length mirror. Grandmother was right. The blue taffeta strapless with the open-toed silver slippers had been a good choice, and I probably looked as good, maybe better, than I had ever looked before. Anyway, I hope he won’t be too disappointed.

He was standing, hands in pockets, in the middle of Grandma’s vast living room as though on the verge of concluding a brilliant business deal. Marshall Lubin was short, with a broad never-take-no-for-an-answer countenance and when I said, “Hello, Marshall,” with a well-practiced smile, he handed me the florist’s box that rested beneath his arm.

“Ohh,” I said, after removing the cover. “Camellias are my favorite.”

“They’re gardenias,” he said, making those his first in-person words to me.

“They’re my favorite, too,” I answered quickly, but not too convincingly. “And they smell a whole lot better.”

The Ridgeway Country Club was located on a wooded spread at the eastern end of Central Avenue. At the door of the ballroom, a fancy professionally painted sign which rested on an easel announced: The Ridgeway Country Club proudly presents the annual collegiate Rhapsody-in-Blue dinner-dance. Sophisticated music by Ron Rainer.

Our first steps inside the ballroom confirmed what I had feared: Everybody looked so damn belonging ... so damn
elegant out on the dance floor, and where in the world did they learn those fancy steps?

But God bless Ron Rainer, who granted me a reprieve. Pressing his baton between two outstretched palms, he stepped before the standing microphone to announce that dinner was now being served.

Good. That will give Marshall and me a little more time to talk, maybe he’ll get to like me a little before he finds out that I never learned to dance.

As he pulled out my chair, I said (Lord, forgive me this lie), “I’m seriously considering going to the University of Alabama. Do you like it there in Tuscaloosa?”

Without exactly answering, he said that his fraternity (ZBT) of which he is treasurer “throws the best parties on campus” and that the University’s school of business (of which he is a student—natch!) is “the best in the country.”

As I slowly nodded in a way calculated to make him think that I was trying to accommodate myself to the grandeur of it, I instead began wondering whatever happened to the likes of the Wharton School of Finance or Harvard’s School of Business? Had they (to keep faith with young Mr. Lubin) dissolved into fantasyland?