Up From Orchard Street (15 page)

“It happens. In the old country, in villages, men got lonely, they made love with sheep, with horses, with God knows what. Of course it is forbidden to Jews and also I came from a big city.” She searched for the correct phrases. “In Odessa we heard of everything. And for the ninety-nine in spelling, it only shows what happens when you fall in love. You’ll get a hundred hundreds. And tomorrow you’ll start to be clean. You’ll shine like a new one.”

Bubby kept her word and I kept mine. I rinsed out my underpants in warm water every night. I ironed my own middies on the kitchen table, flat out, as in a Chinese laundry. We bought a plain but nice blue skirt and two blouses. My mother complained mildly about the expense, but she knew better than to cross Bubby once she made up her mind.

10

The Return of Mister Elkin

THE YOUNG CLEAN doctor wanted each of us examined by a specialist: sending my mother and me to a cardiologist; Willy to an allergist; my father to a chest doctor and Bubby—well maybe to a urologist. He promised the best care available in the city—all free, because he had what he called “a grant” that paid for the tests. In his new red Chevy he would drive us to the various doctors if we agreed.

Lil, who loved the idea of driving with the young doctor, asked, “How could it hurt? Free is free. We have nothing to lose.” My father remained suspicious.

His work year would soon end. Division Street went dead from mid-June until Labor Day. Though he knew it was not the same as charity, my father hated standing in line to apply for unemployment insurance with what he referred to as “the dregs of society.” He ridiculed the small amount of the checks—pocket change he called it. Mostly he despised the grilling they gave him each week about where he had searched for work, what stores he had tried for employment. Patiently he would explain that summer was the slow season, that he had a job waiting for him when the new season started in September.

Each week a new girl at the unemployment agency on Church Street read him the rules. He would grit his teeth not to tell her to take the unemployment insurance and shove it up her ass sideways. Lil didn’t qualify because her weekend job didn’t bring in enough money, and during these summer doldrums, my father worked at Farber’s on weekends on commission, without a salary.

For him, Dr. Wolfson’s offer of spending hours in doctors’ offices held no appeal. “Tell Wolfson we’ll decide when Koronovsky comes back from his honeymoon,” he shot out angrily. Bubby agreed.

My mother begged to be allowed to relate this decision to Dr. Scott Wolfson the next time he came to Orchard Street. For the occasion, she went to Klein’s and bought a blue summer dress with white polka dots, a V-neck and a circular skirt. Since my father believed that only hicks wore white shoes, she selected a tan T-strap sandal and swung her lovely legs over the seat of the chair as she talked to Scott Wolfson.

“If it was up to me I would see a heart doctor, of course, why not. What’s to lose, an hour of my time and with such lovely company? But if Manya and Jack say wait for Dr. Koronovsky, that’s it. Those two are Tammany Hall, you can’t fight them.”

The young doctor may have anticipated this response because he didn’t argue. He replied, “Willy should see an allergist now. He’s the one I selected until Dr. Koronovsky returns from Europe.”

“It won’t hurt,” Willy stated. “Dr. Wolfson said it won’t.”

My mother regarded her son as if they had been introduced recently, as if he were a stranger to whom she had to be polite. “You want to go?”

“Yes. I’m not scared.”

In this initial act of assertion, no one dared to deny Willy. Dr. Wolfson drove him to an allergist on lower Fifth Avenue and kept notes in his book about Willy.

After each visit, he bought Willy a Dixie cup or a Fudgsicle or a Mello-roll. He told Willy he could eat the amount he wanted. “Foods are like flowers,” Scott Wolfson said. “Good to look at, to smell, but when the flowers are wilted, you throw them out.”

Food as flowers! My mother decided to adapt that phrase as her own. Waiting on a customer whom she had to convince to buy a new coat or suit, she reported, “Your old garment is like a flower, when it’s wilted you have to throw it away.”

Still, Bubby could scarcely wait to speak to Dr. Koronovsky. By that time he had returned home from Paris, as his sisters weepingly lamented at the kosher butcher shop. Yet he didn’t come to Grand Street or to his office on East Broadway. We heard he was busy with his new practice.

In fact, he had brought in a substitute, a roly-poly Dr. Solomon who appeared at his office, smiled a lot, and waited patiently for patients who didn’t show up. For several weeks, whether ill, in danger of dying or morbidly paralyzed, they anticipated the return of their healer, Dr. Koronovsky. One Tuesday, at last, his familiar blue car drove up on East Broadway. A line formed outside his office within minutes.

Bubby didn’t dare call him during his first day, but at about six in the evening, when the June sun cast an amber light on our streets, he phoned and said, “Manya, I’m taking an hour off. Are you busy?” Bubby removed her Hoover apron, washed and slipped into a clean cotton house dress, loose, with buttons down the front.

On the last day of school I had discarded my middies. My periwinkle blue skirt was in perfect condition—I hung it up on a hanger each night. Bubby had bought me two blouses, one white, the other pale pink. This evening I chose the pink. Two days ago, when Dr. Wolfson brought Willy home from his treatment, I had worn this outfit and the young doctor grinned broadly: “Don’t you look spiffy.” I blushed to the edges of my teeth.

As soon as Dr. Koronovsky bounded up the stairs he cried, “Don’t you look spiffy,” then rushed to hug Bubby. For reasons I couldn’t fathom, they both wept. Not huge sobs, not waterfall tears, but unable to speak from emotion, choked up, eyes brimming.

Dr. Koronovsky sat close to Bubby on a kitchen chair, his face suntanned. He had shaved off his goatee.

“What have you done to yourself? You’re ten years younger.”

“I owe that to you, Manya. For years you told me, get married, your sisters will live, they’ll manage, and I was afraid. But now it’s come true. Every day with Phyllis is a blessing. I see her in the kitchen or in the living room reading and I can’t believe in her sweetness, her softness, her gentle ways. And our love life is the same. In bed, sleeping, making love, it’s a dream. Why did I wait so long? Why did I deny myself happiness? Only you, Manya, told me the truth, told me to have courage.

“Also my practice. Here I treated children from the minute they were born, often until they died. And young adults, middle-aged, old, every kind of disease. You remember Bernie Frankel from the wedding? He’s a cardiologist. If their hearts are too fast or irregular I have a machine right in my office and in ten, twelve minutes I read the printout and send them to Dr. Frankel. For severe stomach problems they call on a gastroenterologist, that’s a stomach man, or a urologist—” He broke off.

“Manya, Scott Wolfson is concerned about you and I feel very guilty. All those years I concentrated on Jack, Lil, the children, and I didn’t take your blood pressure, never did a urine analysis, because I saw only your inner strength.”

“You’re listening to that pisher, he doesn’t have a practice yet.”

“Take my word for it, Manya, he’s brilliant. Young and brilliant. He knows more than I do.”

“So now the eggs are teaching the chickens?”

“I have practical knowledge, practical experience. He has theories, ideas. I started going to seminars. Every night I study like a schoolboy. Down here, you try to hide the truth. Uptown they expect to be educated. You explain to patients everything about their conditions.”

I could see the pulse in Bubby’s neck begin to pound. “Then you should tell me the truth about Willy. Why does Wolfson take such an interest in him? From everyone in the family, he picks Willy. The boy, maybe he’s a little quiet, maybe he’s not brilliant like his sister, but what does he think, I mean the young doctor?”

“Dr. Wolfson, he’s in a new field, not only a child’s specialist, a pediatrician, but a pediatric psychiatrist. It means how the mind can change what happens in the body.”

“Vus zuch du? Willy is meshugah?”

“Dr. Wolfson thinks that Willy’s allergies, his asthma, are related to . . . Well, let’s put it this way. Willy is allergic to the Lower East Side, to the harshness, to what’s expected of young boys down here. I remember your Jack when I was a medical student. Confident, flirting with girls, not afraid of anything. Too bad Jack didn’t finish college, go to law school. He decided on the easy way out . . . Still, because of his close relationship to you he thought he could conquer the world.”

Dr. Koronovsky sat quietly but inner turmoil deepened the creases on his face. “You give Willy all the love in the world. But he is aware that you’re not his mother.”

“He thinks I wouldn’t put my arm in the fire for him?”

“You would, but it’s different. You love him, you protect him. But he’s not first with anyone.”

“First, second. What is this, one of Jack’s horse races?”

Dr. Koronovsky laughed to ease the tension. “Dr. Wolfson will tell you more. It’s his specialty. Also he’s a blessing to the whole family. If I had one gift to give you, it was Dr. Wolfson. Trust him.” He coughed to hide his embarrassment and reached into his jacket pocket.

“Speaking of presents, Phyllis and I bought you a present. From Paris. Phyllis picked it out. We appreciated how hard you worked for the wedding. And also for our years together, for our long conversations. Anyway, here it is.”

The gift lay in a maroon velvet box, stamped Cartier, Paris, France. Bubby opened the box. A flush appeared on her cheeks.

“It’s a tortoiseshell comb for your hair, when you wear your braid on top. And, Manya, that’s a real diamond in the middle of it.”

Speechless, her hand shook as she placed the comb at the top of her white hair. “It’s perfect for you,” he said. “Manya, from my mouth into God’s ears. May you have the love you deserve.”

Everyone who inspected the comb with its quarter-carat diamond regarded it as a lucky omen: my parents, customers, the bosses, the neighbors.

So when I searched the mailbox and brought out a typed postcard signed “Mr. Elkin,” the news was instantly telegraphed across the ghetto and received not as a thunderbolt, but a sign of what had been predicted by the fancy comb from Paris: a lucky omen.

The typed postcard read: “Dear Manya: After so many years, it’s time for us to meet again. Unless you write me otherwise, I will be at your house at twelve o’clock for lunch, June 20. Sincerely, Mr. Elkin.”

I read it to myself once and out loud to Bubby twice. She sat in the kitchen chair immobilized. As in the game “Simon Says” where if you forget to ask “May I” you have to hold the position you’re in until your turn comes around again, she put both of her hands to her heart and sat utterly still.

“Bubby, Mister Elkin is coming to see you. Are you glad, Bubby, are you glad?”

It was Friday. My parents had slept late and then taken the subway to the Roxy. Willy was off with Dr. Wolfson having his allergies tested. Clayton was delivering the week’s bakery orders. I shook her shoulder. “Bubby, are you all right? Why don’t you say something? Do you want to see Mister Elkin?”

She didn’t answer. Maybe she was waiting for her heart to slow down. Finally she said, “Ich vayst nisht.”

“You don’t know if you want to see him or not?”

“I don’t know.”

“But Bubby, you always talk about Mister Elkin . . .”

She let out a long sigh. “Talking is one thing, seeing is another.”

I jiggled from foot to foot. “Don’t you love him anymore?”

I was accustomed to yes or no answers. When my mother uttered “maybe,” “perhaps,” “I’m not sure,” “I’ll think about it,” it translated into “no.” My daily existence was organized by simple guidelines. For Bubby to tell me that she didn’t know how she felt about Mister Elkin threw me into profound confusion. I desperately longed for her assertiveness. “Do you want me to call anyone? Shall I call Uncle Goodman?”

“What can he do for me, but sure, why not? Call him at the factory.”

After the phone rang three times, I hung up, not wanting to waste a call if someone else should answer. Then I dialed zero for the operator and asked for the Yonkers number. Flo, Aunt Bertha’s daughter, picked up on the first ring. “Is Aunt Bertha there? Tell her we had a postcard from Mister Elkin. It’s important.” Flo yelled, “Mother it’s important, a call from Ahnt Manya.”

I handed the phone to Bubby. “Mister Elkin cumt nexten Shabbas.”

Aunt Bertha’s cry of disbelief almost cracked the phone. “Goodman and I will be down in the morning, maybe ten o’clock. We’ll talk about everything. Manya, how are you taking this?”

“I don’t know.”

My grandmother may have been uncertain, but my father’s response left no room for doubt. “That lousy two-timing con man, that chiseler, that snake, that goniff, rats in sewers, a whole wall of roaches, bedbugs big as red grapes are better than that vermin, Mister Elkin. He took every cent of your savings, every penny of yours to go to South America to make a fortune, so he could marry you. Then he disappeared. It was a miracle that he didn’t come back in the middle of the night and take back those pearls and earrings he gave you.

“Don’t you remember how we tried to find out if he sailed for South America? How could you be so naive, so gullible, so foolish to not even ask him
where
in South America? Brazil? Argentina? Were you fainting with such love that you handed over your money to that swindler, that Ponzi, that schemer? For those kisses, you paid plenty. Every cent you had, not to mention that you actually wanted to marry him. A man with no character, no sense of right from wrong. Let him hang himself in front of Macy’s window.” My father took a dollar bill from under the candlestick, and put a match to it. “May he burn in hell like this dollar. He’ll never step foot in this house. Not if I have anything to say about it.”