Up From Orchard Street (27 page)

Then he switched gears. “Your mother must be very proud that you’re such a good reader.”

“Yes,” I lied.

“She must be giving a lot of thought to your education.”

“Yes,” I lied.

“I’m sure your parents want you to attend the best university possible.”

“Yes,” I lied.

“You know,” he explained, “that’s how we happened to settle in Colchester. When my mother was alive, my dad tried to please her in every way. Trips to Europe. Trips across the country. One year we went to California. Days and days on the train but Los Angeles was aye-mazing, open, free. You could eat pancakes for dinner, wear shorts at night, never have to worry about being polite or saying what was expected of you. It was like a frontier city except glamorous. We were crazy about the place.

“After my mother died, my father became distraught. I mean off his rocker. He wanted to leave anything that reminded him of her and for one wild week he kept insisting that we pack up and move to California.

“Do you know who stopped him? Estelle Solomon—my mother’s best friend. She said, ‘Where will the boys go to school? What kind of education will they have out west?’ Dad knew she was right. Hal and I studied at Choate. We came home for the funeral, but we didn’t finish the term there. We couldn’t bear to leave Dad and he couldn’t bear to let us. So we searched for a retreat and bought this place. We actually went to Colchester High. At Choate I was reading De Toqueville in French as fast as I read the comic strips, and here they didn’t have a science course, just some world history books from before the Johnstown flood. It didn’t matter. Hal decided on med school because of Mother’s cancer. He wanted to make a difference in medicine. We built up the farm and then went to the best universities anyway. Choate helped.”

Maurey held my hand in his, swinging it as we walked. He spoke as quickly as a New Yorker, yet I had to strain to remember his words. He had gone to a school named Choke, and read some writer like the comic strips. In New York we called them “the jokes.” Willy and I loved “Terry and the Pirates,” but we
hated
the Dragon Lady. I started to say this to Maurey and held back. With Hal I had no trouble speaking the truth and half-truths. Maurey closed down something inside me. His beauty, his naturalness made me ill at ease. But I wasn’t surprised when he said, “Your mother is very talented and very beautiful.”

“Yes,” I replied without lying.

Si Ratoff waved to Maurey. “See you later, dear girl,” Maurey said and trotted off to meet him.

In the evening Maurey suggested a hayride.

“Hayride?” Estelle clapped her hands. “Don’t we need a wagon pulled by a horse?”

“We’ve tons of hay to fill up the bed of the truck and we can pile in a dozen people.” With Maurey the deed was done the moment the idea struck him. He backed the truck into the barn; the med students filled it with hay.

Estelle and Aunt Bea and the two women playing mahjong bestirred themselves for once and agreed to come with us. They had stout legs, overhanging stomachs and wide behinds. They drove from rural Massachusetts to vacation in rural Connecticut. Smoothing their belt-less sack dresses, they hopped into the rear end of the truck with surprising agility. A few of the guests’ children came, too. We sank into the hay, chattering with excitement.

“Once around the lake and then the village for ice cream cones. My treat,” Maurey announced.

The sole person to hold back was Lil. “I don’t think so, I have to do my nails, write postcards.” Subdued, she kept stepping backward as though to turn around and run. The forlorn expression on her face must have caught Maurey’s attention. His golden head popped through the truck window. “We’re not having a hayride without you.” Gabe jumped out of the front seat and wordlessly lifted my mother up. The broad-assed mahjong women wriggled to make room and Estelle hugged Lil in elation.

“What shall we sing?” Hal asked and started the first round of a song: “The clarinet, the clarinet goes do a do, goes do a det . . .”

We drove around the small muddy lake, then past Grey’s Hotel, imitating drums and violins, until we were hoarse.

At the village drugstore, we tumbled out, disheveled but radiant, covered with hay.

“Show of hands. How many for chocolate, how many for vanilla?” Hal did not pronounce the flavor
ella
the way we did in New York. “Any for coffee ice cream?”

Willy and I had drunk coffee from earliest childhood, so Willy selected coffee, I chocolate. Maurey handed Lil a sugar cone filled with strawberry ice cream. “Can I have a lick?” he asked and before she could answer, he dug his white teeth into the top of her cone and darted away.

We finished our treats before we started back. Some of us were thirsty, some sticky, all tired. Lil was among the first off the truck, disappearing into our room with haste. “Did you like it? Did you like the hayride?” Willy asked her, his enthusiasm a rarity.

“Yes,” she answered, “only I wish Daddy and Bubby would come here tomorrow instead of next week.”

Despite the hectic air that pervaded the hotel over the weekend, Maurey remained an island of calm. The one concession he made to the bustle around him was to insist that Lil take her music lesson immediately after breakfast. He led her to the piano bench, with me standing to her right. To warm up his slender fingers, he played and sang softly, “But How About Me?” “And one day, a baby will climb upon your knee and put his arms around you, but how about me?”

There was rarely a moment when he wasn’t smiling, showing off his white teeth, chatting with men and women, on top of the world. I wondered if he ever confronted a sad day, despaired, cried, felt less lionhearted and more heartbroken, whether he was capable of coping with the stress that accompanied our family hour to hour and day to day: bad health, poverty. True, his mother had died, but Maurey had been blessed with some kind of magic.

“All right, Lil. Lots of vibrato, sing slowly. Let’s start where we left off yesterday.”

More nervous today than the day before, she edged away from Maurey on the piano seat and wiped her sweaty palms on her bare thighs. But she was a trouper, a natural performer, and when she wobbled on the opening notes, she took a breath and started again: “I still,” pause, “get a thrill,” pause, “thinking of you, and I still,” pause, “feel your lips,” pause, “kissing me too.”

“First rate. I’m impressed. Very impressive.” He picked up her left hand and covered it with kisses. “Want to sing more?”

She didn’t know the words.

Maurey understood this, and repeated offhandedly, “Although our love affair wasn’t to be.” He didn’t have to instruct Lil when to pause: she blushed violently on the words, “our love affair wasn’t to be.”

“Wonderful, perfect. Now from the top, all three lines.”

She repeated them twice. He praised lavishly, told her she was wonderful, that she would knock everyone out of their socks, that if he wasn’t entering law school, he would be her manager and make her a star. Abruptly, he asked, “Want to see the cows?”

Lil and I asked simultaneously, “What cows?”

“The cows that give us milk, cream and butter. The ones who eat the hay in the barn.”

I had covered every inch of the property without meeting a cow. Why hadn’t I noticed that?

“They’re at the next farm. Gladkowski’s farm. He keeps them for us, puts them out to pasture, milks them, has the milk pasteurized. But this is our last year. Too many requests for city bottled milk. It’s no longer cost-efficient for us. That’s what Dad and Hal and I talked about. Projects for next year. Eliminating the cows, giving them to Gladkowski and remodeling that part of the barn for guest rooms. Anyway, off we go.”

He walked between us, taking my mother’s hand and mine. Anyone seeing us would believe we had traversed this road for years. A taxi whizzed by with Aunt Bea, Alice, Lenny and Willy on their way to the beauty parlor.

Gladkowski’s farm was overgrown with trees, bushes and vines that made it impossible to glimpse from the road. Maurey led the way as if hacking through a jungle. “Watch out for the chocolate patties,” he warned.

We crouched beneath the drooping limbs of lopsided trees and the stench of cow flop twitched our nostrils. Through the open door of a small cottage we could see a rustic kitchen. Sparks and the sound of crackling wood came from the blackened kitchen stove.

A bulky woman lifted one of the heavy iron covers to feed more kindling into the oven, her hair pulled back with a rubber band and her cheeks the color of flame. She wore a man’s denim shirt whose sleeves had been cut off at the shoulder.

“Hi, Olga,” Maurey called out.

The woman’s face grew redder than the flames.

“Maurey. Margie said you was home. I been baking bread for you.”

“You shouldn’t in this heat.”

She wiped her hands on a soot-covered apron. “I should. For my favorite fella.”

“Olga, all that flirting will get you in trouble someday.” They laughed to acknowledge their familiar banter.

“This is young Margie’s mother and these are guests from our hotel,” he said. The woman barely nodded; she couldn’t take her eyes from Maurey.

“Where’s Gladdy?”

“Maybe in the barn, maybe in the pasture. I baked six loaves. You want to carry them back with you?”

“Just what we can eat. Hal will pick up the rest later.”

The entire place—the farmhouse with its slanted roof, the barn that leaned to one side, the crooked rusty fence—gave the impression of sinking inch by inch into the ground. Yet the field trembled with wildflowers: white Queen Anne’s lace, yellow buttercups, random sprouts of red that appeared to have sprung up by accident. In the midst of this luxurious wildflower carpet the cows chewed and shat simultaneously. One cow, black and white, looked like a cutout in a cardboard puzzle; another was rusty brown, sleek-shiny like a horse; the bull was menacing, ugly, square-faced, with vacant eyes and a body as gray as the rocks beyond. In the distance two more cows sauntered lazily.

We shuddered when the bull lowered its head and approached the fence. To steady us, Maurey circled his arms around our waists. More, he cupped his chin over Lil’s right shoulder. She put her hand up in an attempt to remove his face from hers. He responded by placing his hand over her hand, locking her body close to his as he leaned against her. She pretended nothing had happened, a casual meaningless gesture.

The embrace lasted only moments. Like a spell in a fairy tale we stood rooted to the spot, incapable of moving.

Farmer Gladkowski broke the tension and Maurey’s grip on my mother. “Maurey, you no-good bum, whatcha doing in my pasture? France is not good for you no more?”

Maurey spun around. He hugged his tall, skinny, wrinkle-faced neighbor. “Gladdy, I missed you.”

The farmer smelled of unwashed overalls, cow shit, warm sour milk, salty sweat, greasy hair. “We got your card, but couldn’t read it. Olga and Margie, they cried over it.”

The two men abandoned us, walking from the pasture to the house. As we rounded a corner, Olga pressed a freshly baked white bread into the crook of Maurey’s suntanned arm. Her hands were swollen paws, burned in many places from handling the black iron lids of the wood-burning stove, scarred from knife cuts, from thrashing through overgrown brush, from carrying old milk buckets to the ancient pasteurizer.

“The cows are in great shape, and we’re giving them to you,” Maurey explained. “Buying store milk next year.”

“You go to France, you come home crazy.” Mr. Gladkowski wiped his face with a shredded bandanna.

As we departed, Maurey broke off chunks of bread and handed them to us. Lil hadn’t uttered a single word during our visit to Gladkowski’s farm.

A steady stream of cars was heading to Pankin’s hotel. Car doors slammed; families greeted each other noisily.

“The Gladkowskis, they saved me and Hal when we first moved here,” Maurey explained as he hurried us along. “I would wake up screaming for my mother and then Hal would start crying, too. Sometimes in the middle of the night we’d run to the Gladkowskis’ house. Olga cooked us breakfast at three in the morning. We got used to her bad smell and the stink of the outhouse. That was the first thing Dad did for them. He installed a bathroom in the house with a toilet and shower. How did they live without an inside toilet or shower? How could anyone?”

My mother and I remained silent.

As we neared the main house Maurey broke into a trot, his blond hair flying. “I’m here, I’m back,” he called and lost himself handling luggage and directing newcomers to their rooms. Lil breathed hard. She considered herself a woman with New York street smarts, a flirt for the purpose of bargaining, getting something for nothing. But she had never been with any man except Jack. She was adrift, rudderless, confined to a silence she couldn’t break. Instead of climbing up to our room, she dropped into a wicker chair at the side of the house. Whatever her thoughts she didn’t share them with anyone.

16

Staying Until Labor Day

ON FRIDAY, WE expected Bubby, Jack and Uncle Geoff. Jack had called Mr. Pankin to say that his mother was bringing dinner for everyone in the hotel. Like the wildflowers in the field that submitted to every stray breeze, word spread from guest to guest that a famous chef from New York was preparing a special Friday night dinner.

Willy marked off each hour with a Waterman’s pen he had found in the grass, which he shared with Lil. Our ethic did not necessitate returning anything we found or inquiring about who lost it. “Finders keepers” was the rule instilled in us from birth.

On Thursday, the day before we expected Bubby, I sat under my favorite pear tree and finished
Jane Eyre
. I was sad, and ready to let the tears fall when Hal came in search of me.

“Hey, you funny duck.” He hadn’t had his hair cut in weeks. It flopped over his forehead and ears; it curled down his neck. He sat beside me.

“Estelle tells me you’re on a retreat, reading, reading, reading. Finished
Jane Eyre
?”

I nodded.

“Like the happy ending?”

I meant to say, “Not really happy.” I nodded again.

“Then why are you sad?”

One or two tears wet my cheeks, which I hoped he didn’t notice. “It’s not the book. I just . . . I just don’t want to go back to New York.”

“Like it here, do you?”

“Not like. Love.”

“What do you love best?”

“Our room, the trees, the people.”

“You care for Estelle, don’t you? And me and Gabe and Maurey?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “We like you, too. Estelle said that knowing you was the best thing that happened to her in years.”

“You mean my family, my mother?”

“We think Lil is great. Beautiful and talented, a charmer. But no, you funny duck, we mean
you
. Of the many guests, you’re the most interesting.”

How to accept this compliment, from a man, particularly from Hal? Dr. Scott Wolfson, whom I had loved first, hadn’t said he found me interesting.

“Estelle and I wondered if you’d like to go to the Book Barn today. A farewell gift, something to read when you’re home.”

“I still have
Great Expectations
.”

“We thought a few more Dickens.”

“What about Charlotte Brontë?”

“You’ve read the best. The others aren’t so fascinating. Her sister Emily wrote a good one.
Wuthering Heights
. It’s harder to understand, at the beginning.”

I preferred Hal to the others because he didn’t speak down to me. He treated me as if I were an adult, accepting my silence or my sadness. Finally, “Well, how about the Book Barn?”

“I’d rather wait for my Bubby. I want her to see it.”

“Does she read a lot?”

“Her friends do, and her husband, my grandfather, he read to her every day. Pushkin. Do you know that Russian writer?”

“No, but I always wanted to have a dog with a Russian name. Don’t you think a dog called Pushkin would be great?” We both laughed.

He nudged me with his elbow. “Hey, cheer up. We’re open for Thanksgiving you know.” Hal waited. “I suppose your grandmother’s restaurant is reserved for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve, too.”

“Yes,” I lied.

“How about making a date right after New Year’s? I’ll take you to the Radio City Music Hall and then we’ll have dinner.”

My secret about living on Orchard Street caused me despair. I loved and trusted Hal, but a description of our dwelling was out of the question.

“Sometimes we get sick in the winter,” I said.

“Everyone gets sick in the winter. Besides, you have a young energetic doctor. You told me so yourself.” He helped me to my feet and carried my book. “If you won’t drive to the Book Barn, come see the room we fixed up for you and your grandmother.”

It was a small single room and bath, the smallest of the cottages. Everything was white: the walls, the double bed, the coverlet, the dresser, the night stand. Color came from a large vase of flowers—not flowers from the fields but from a shop—and the shining glory was a basket wrapped in yellow cellophane filled with fresh fruit and tied with yellow ribbon.

“Where did these come from?”

“Secret. We have our ways.”

“I wish I could stay here forever,” I said, or thought I said. Maybe I told it to myself and didn’t utter a word.

One thing was certain: I didn’t sleep much the night before my father and Bubby drove up. I washed and dried my hair in the morning, combed it a dozen times and selected my dress with the embroidered strawberries. Lil didn’t bother me about breakfast. I stood on the porch, watching the unpaved road. Guests must have said “good morning” or “hello” but the sound didn’t reach me. I didn’t hear the delivery trucks, the slamming of the front door, the guests talking or laughing. I waited with patience for the black Packard to come into view. At last it did, drawing to a stop exactly at the porch steps.

Jack, seated in the back, jumped out first and led Bubby out of the front passenger seat. The instant I spied her, I didn’t run down the steps of the porch, I jumped. I flung myself off the porch and into Bubby’s arms. Her beauty took my breath away. Aunt Bertha’s black-and-white-striped dress had been cut short. Bubby wore it loose without a belt. Broad shoulder straps crisscrossed in the back, and the square neckline revealed her flawless white skin.

Pandy had done Bubby’s hair with her braid as a crown. Her feet were shod in white flat-heeled shoes with black patent leather heels and tips. Since her diamond earrings and pearls had been hocked for the summer, a simple gold chain—Aunt Bertha’s—adorned her neck. I buried my face in hers with my legs wrapped around her waist.

It had not been my intention to cry. But once I felt Bubby close to me, warm, sweet-smelling, erect and elegant, I couldn’t stop my tears.

Every sound on the farm came to a halt. Every activity ceased, as guests watched me and Bubby. Finally a voice said, “Look at that child with her grandmother,” and another, “She’s beautiful, like a movie star, what’s her name, May Robson?” “No, more aristocratic.” The last comment was Estelle’s.

I lifted my head. Lil didn’t crowd us; she waited her turn, smiling. Someone asked her, “Is that your mother?” Lil replied, “Yes, that’s my mother.”

She skipped down the steps. “Ma, you look beautiful.” Noisy kisses followed. Lil’s relief at viewing shiny-haired Jack obliterated my fears.

“The food!” Geoff cried in his most commanding voice. Hal and Gabe appeared and from the trunk hauled two-foot-high stainless-steel cauldrons packed in “magic ice” by Moe of The Grand Canal Cafeteria. Three vast platters held cold salmon surrounded by Bubby’s signature marinated beets. One heavy cauldron was filled with stuffed cabbage; another with beef brisket. Challahs large enough for many guests sat on cartons filled with gallons of fresh fruit compote, strudel and rugulach. Hal and Gabe groaned under their loads as they staggered to the kitchen, and Mr. Pankin rushed out to greet Bubby personally.

“Mrs. Roth, it’s an honor.” I held my breath as Bubby answered without a trace of Yiddishisms, “It’s my pleasure. Please, call me Manya.”

As soon as we could we walked across the lawn into Bubby’s room, our family crowding inside to comment on the fruit basket, the fresh flowers, the white coverlet. Jack removed his mother’s shoes. My mother lifted her dress over her head to keep her hair in place. Swiftly and expertly, Jack opened her suitcase and hung up her skirt and blouse for tonight and her outfit for Saturday night, packed professionally as only Jack could—he prided himself on his ability to fold women’s clothes so they emerged without a wrinkle. Her sundries went into the bathroom and the medicine bottle with white pills rested on the white night stand. The summer robe with sprigs of flowers that she kept in Yonkers had been laundered professionally.

“Ma, don’t forget to drink a lot of water. Two glasses would be good.” Jack kissed her on the cheek and left the room with Willy. Lil helped Bubby remove her fancy rose-colored corset and a new satiny bra. “Ma, you look like a bride,” Lil said, laughing, “only thank God you’re not.” It had not occurred to me before that Bubby bought these undergarments for Mister Elkin’s arrival—that these were part of her trousseau.

“Would you like me to bring you a bottle of soda?”

“Things I loved, maslinas, lox, sturgeon, caviar, soda, they’re bad for the kidneys. No more lifting, no more carrying heavy bags with chickens and geese.”

“What do they expect you to do? Retire? They must be crazy.”

“Not retire, only to take it slower. Pavolinka.”

Bubby let out a sigh as she slipped into her robe. “It’s wonderful to see you. This summer, it was hard without you.”

The sight of Bubby brought Lil to a familiar plateau in the universe. The confusion that had rested on her brow for days vanished with this simple speech.

“You bought so much food. Clayton came back to help you?”

“For three days we worked. It kept us busy. We couldn’t put you to shame.”

“You, shame us? You look like ten movie stars.” Lil didn’t ask who had paid for the food. Surely it didn’t come from Jack’s unemployment check. “Try to take a nap. You don’t have to dress until five.”

Bubby regarded Lil closely. “You’re happy here?”

“I won’t be the same again.” Without waiting for a reply she tiptoed out.

At last we were without the others. It was Bubby’s turn to study me.

I tumbled off the bed to hide my confusion.

“So who do you love that you’re falling from the bed?”

I settled on the pillow beside her. “Hal is my first favorite. Not because he buys me books but because he wants to practice medicine here in Colchester. I would like that.”

Of the many extraordinary aspects of my ties to Bubby, the most unusual was that our intimacy never unraveled. It stayed intact whether we were apart for a few hours or a few weeks. We picked up exactly where we had left off without a heartbeat of awkwardness or hesitation.

“You want to be with a man like him or you want to live in Colchester?”

In my daydreams about Bubby’s visit, I intended to have this conversation about Colchester the second day. I imagined we would drive to the Book Barn, and walk around the village square, and while we rested on a shaded bench I would suggest, plead, beg her to consider moving with me and Willy to Colchester. The moment came a day too soon but I couldn’t squander it.

“Bubby, listen. Do you think you could possibly move here with me and Willy? There’s a school in the village and when it snowed we could walk in clean snow like you did in Odessa. Bubby, there’s a tearoom next to the post office. It’s open only in the summer. You could rent it and serve dinners there weekends. People would drive from all over Connecticut to have dinners at Manya’s. We would live in a house near the village and Mr. Pankin would drive us. He’s very lonely in the winter when his sons are in school. It would be peaceful and quiet. Wouldn’t that be a lovely life? Wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it?”

Bubby sat up. I could see her mouthing what she would reply, yet not a sound came from her. Then: “It’s a dream, ah shayna chulim.”

With all of my passion I resisted that statement. “It’s not a dream. It could happen.”

“Yes, yes, but what about Jack and Lil? You didn’t tell me about them.”

I was prepared for the question. “They would stay in the city, work, see movies and shows. Do what they always do. You know.”

“They would live in the cold apartment on Orchard Street themselves?”

“They could come to see us, like Daddy does now, a few days at a time.”

“What about my business, my restaurant?”

“I told you. You would have it here instead, in the tearoom.”

“You think my restaurant is where I cook and serve food? It’s where I have my friends. Not only the neighbors, but the two doctors, even that stingy Yussie Feldman . . .” Her voice dropped.

“Couldn’t you bear to leave them, Bubby? You were able to leave Odessa.”

“I was young then, crazy in love, the two of us could eat the whole world with our hands. I’ve lived at 12 Orchard Street for thirty-five years, maybe more. If we moved to Connecticut, Lil and Jack would find an apartment uptown and the whole building would close down. The neighbors would find somewhere else, maybe Ludlow Street, maybe Hester, but somewhere, and with it my whole lifetime . . . Some of it was bitter, but also . . .”

I didn’t cry. I waited until I could speak without disappointment. “Does that mean that we have to live on Orchard Street forever?”

“Forever? Nothing lasts forever. Not the greatest love or the worst one. Not the greatest happiness or the greatest pain. It’s like water. It runs through your fingers and it’s gone.”

“Bubby, does this mean no?”

“Next summer, if you still love this place we’ll talk again.”

She caught me in her arms and rocked me. We fell asleep.

That night I realized that serving food was theater. With Lil’s help, Bubby got into her corset again, and covered her bra with the blue slip from the dress she wore at Dr. Koronovsky’s wedding. Over it came a white lace blouse and a long blue silk skirt, both Aunt Bertha’s. The Cartier comb with its diamond rested on her braid—the one possession she hadn’t hocked for our vacation. My red-and-white party dress with its billowing slip was too short but it made do.