Up From Orchard Street (37 page)

The rest of us grew as hushed as in the moment before Kol Nidre on Yom Kippur eve.

“How could I say no to what would make you so happy? It’s Gan Edan. Orchard Street was my home. This is yours, for all of us.”

My mother fell on Bubby’s neck. Orloff clapped his hands and cried, “Mazeltov, mazeltov!” at our change of fortune.

Perhaps made uncomfortable by our intensity, Peterson managed to grin. My father bit his lip. Not one of us asked about the cost of the rent.

Orloff, who planned to occupy the apartment below us, seized the opportunity to kiss Bubby full on the lips. Bubby announced, “If you live long enough, you live to see everything.”

Flushed with success, Lil decided to bring nothing from our old apartment to Grand Street except our best clothes. The recently acquired kitchen table and Willy’s new folding bed were given to Clayton, as gifts. For perhaps half an hour we considered taking the dining room table, the scene of hundreds of meals and years of festivities. But moving it to the center of the room, we discovered that it was worm-ridden and its legs uneven. Pulling strudel dough over its surface for so long had left lumps of pastry embedded in the crevices and along the back. It was a pitiful mess.

Clayton had been off watching movies at Loew’s Canal when we inspected the Grand Street premises, but the moment Jack suggested him as the superintendent of the new building Orloff jumped at the idea, pending the architect’s approval. Clayton’s interview was scheduled for the next day.

Bubby beamed at him when he appeared with his hair pomaded, dressed in one of Jack’s slightly worn but serviceable white-on-white shirts, his black leather jacket and black trousers. Bubby assured him that Pete Peterson would be impressed. He was.

After the interview and a discussion about the furnace and garbage disposal Clayton came back to Orchard Street elated, twenty feet off the ground, bubbling, laughing, tap-dancing in the kitchen, spilling over with ideas.

“I’m buying a doorman’s jacket, and I’ll stand outside with my whistle and call for cabs, open and close the doors for the tenants, the only doorman in the neighborhood.”

Clayton, like the rest of us, had been weaned on movies. He conceived of his new role with Hollywood grandeur.

My father signed the lease with a flourish. The rent was forty-five dollars a month; he told everyone he paid sixty. Aunt Bertha in her mink jacket and dashing mink beret steered my mother away from middle-class decorating mistakes. No flowered drapes trimmed with red velvet, no maroon carpets with flowered patterns. No shag rugs— too difficult to clean. The rooms lent themselves to neutral colors; pale lined drapes that hung from ceiling to floor. A contemporary apartment required contemporary decor.

The fact that we didn’t have two dimes to rub together did not enter this theoretical equation. Scott Wolfson, who wandered in, recognized our state of poverty when Jack suggested a new loan from the Morris Plan and the rest of us with one voice shouted, “No!”

Nevertheless, Uncle Goodman sent us three twin box springs and mattresses to use until my parents could afford a bedroom set of their own. I snuggled in one twin with Bubby, my parents in their luxurious bedroom in another, and Willy in a real bed for himself at last—his first since the cradle. Doctors Koronovsky, Wolfson and Frank contributed a gift certificate for a dining room set at Jones Furniture and Jack opted for an oval-shaped table in teak, with six matching chairs padded with a nubby fabric in the lightest shade of tan.

My mother, who had spent years raising and lowering hem lines, adjusting collars and saving out-of-fashion clothing toward the day when the style would be revived, tossed the rejects from her closet to Clayton. Some he slept in, others he sashayed in, the rest he sold to a secondhand store. Uncle Goodman insisted that Clayton keep the electric heaters. He stored them in his one-room studio in our new building.

I had little to pack, although I could not leave behind Mrs. Rosinski’s gift to me: her sewing threads, needles and hoops of various sizes. Clayton had found the box beside her door with the words
Jung Gul
pasted on her one significant possession. We hid it in a hatbox, together with the three dresses she had embroidered for me. Jack didn’t discover them, so he couldn’t decry this legacy as a jinx. Rough cord tied together the notebooks with my stories and the books bought for me in Connecticut.

Abe made two trips to the new apartment—one with fewer than a dozen boxes and then with our family. Not one of us turned to look back. We feared that Bubby would cry but she didn’t. We never stepped inside 12 Orchard Street again.

21

Up from Orchard Street

BY THE TIME the intercom bell announced the entire Simon family on Saturday morning at nine o’clock, Manya and Clayton had been roasting meat and fowl since daybreak. They were preparing for our new catering business for merchants as far away as Second Avenue.

Jack could not conceal his pride when he conducted the Simons on the grand tour. Even Uncle Geoff, usually reluctant with his compliments, openly admitted, “West End Avenue has nothing to compare to this.”

Jack boasted, “Architect’s name is Pete Peterson and this is his maiden voyage into the slums. He says an architectural magazine is going to photograph the building and especially our apartment.”

Uncle Geoff nodded impatiently. Obviously he had a secret to share with my father, and obviously he couldn’t wait to be alone with him. Also obviously, my father understood “offen glance.”

“Come on,” Jack said, “I have to open the store but I’ll treat to coffee and Danish at Emil’s.”

Geoff mounted his usual high horse. “It’s not Em-il’s, it’s French. Aye-meel, as in Aye-meel Zola.”

“I stand corrected.” My father winked at me.

I was too miserable to respond. As always, Cousin Alice’s presence cast a cloud over the private jokes between my father and me.

“See you in an hour,” Geoff told Aunt Bea. “Then we’ll drop in on my mother.” Over his shoulder he asked me, “Want to come with us to visit Grandma Rae?”

“I have a run-through of our play today; the performance is next week.”

This polite answer to my uncle testified to my performing skills. My avoidance of Grandma Rae, Lil’s mother, was no secret.

The mystery of the Simons’ visit burst upon us when Aunt Bea, unable to restrain herself longer, announced in megaphone tones, “We’re not going to Connecticut this year. It’s Florida, Miami Beach, to the Roney Plaza.”

“To
Florida
? A million miles from here and sitting up all night in the train. What for?” Lil exclaimed.

“Summer rates,” Aunt Bea replied smugly. “You know Geoffy. He finds out about these things. The Roney Plaza, it’s for millionaires. Swimming pool, tennis courts, dancing every evening to live bands.”

Then she said, “This is for Manya. For your new home.” She handed Bubby a large carton.

Clayton cut open the tape and removed wads of tissue paper. Inside a small box lay measuring spoons: tablespoon, teaspoon, half and quarter sizes. Staring in disbelief at the four spoons on their tin ring, Bubby silently blessed Clayton for exclaiming, “Just what we need for our snazzy kitchen.”

“There’s something else.” Aunt Bea smiled modestly.

Clayton withdrew a translucent salad bowl in a nonbreakable material, not glass, but not cheap plastic, complete with serving spoon and fork.

With relief, Bubby seized upon the bowl, perfect for raising yeast dough.

“You heard about Lil?” Bubby said, laughing. “Everything from Orchard Street we left behind. Jack, he went to a special wholesale store to buy me new pots and pans. The old ones I was used to, the burned bottoms and no covers, didn’t bother me. With these new ones, my hands have to learn again.” The recitation brought her to the inevitable graciousness. “A nice bowl like this I really needed.”

“Don’t throw out the box,” Lil instructed and Bubby and I read her mind—she intended to return the presents. In a moment, though, her plan was dashed. The box read “Abraham and Straus,” located somewhere in Brooklyn. It could have been Timbuktu.

“What’s in the garment bag?” Quick recovery was one of Lil’s virtues and she had seen it when the Simons walked in.

Bea had brought her summer wardrobe to show off and spilled out shiny blue shorts and a short-sleeved blouse in a matching fabric, pajama pants edged in white, midriff halters, short jackets in rainbow hues to cover her bathing suits, all made of garish satin.

“Gorgeous. Out of this world,” cried Clayton.

“I never saw the likes,” admitted Aunt Bea.

As she folded and repacked her outfits, Bubby added under her breath, “Perfect for a nafka.”

As usual, Bubby wasn’t far from wrong.

I went off to my spring show rehearsal, a hodgepodge of scenes from
Peter Pan
and individual recitations. I was responsible for a sonnet from Shakespeare. In the grand finale for the entire company each student recited assigned quotations that ranged from Shakespeare to Maxwell Anderson. Miss Sussman’s notion of dramatic delivery, not based on Stanislavsky, emphasized breakneck speed, the better to conceal the deficiencies of her less talented actors.

Sensing my impatience to get home afterward—I didn’t want to miss any information about the Simons’ trip to Florida—Abe ran a few red lights, and a few blocks from Grand Street we spied Jack and Lil, walking home arm in arm from their respective stores.

“I decided to let Farber close up,” Jack explained as he climbed into Abe’s taxi. “Only mad dogs shop late on Saturday night.” He withdrew a single from his pants pocket. “Believe me, getting into this cab saved us after standing all day.”

No sooner did we cross the threshold of our apartment than Lil burst out, “Ma, can you believe it? Jack swears it’s true. Geoffy has a girlfriend, a manicurist, her summer job is in Miami Beach, that’s why they’re going there. He’s crazy for her brand, she gives him French. He’s so worn out from sex he can hardly stand. Ma,” Lil continued, perplexed, “what’s French?”

“Me you’re asking? If Jack knows, let him tell.”

“Jack says it’s a man’s favorite.”

“So if it’s Geoff’s favorite, Bea can do it, too.”

My father changed into his at-home clothes, the shirt he had worn to work and the bottoms of his pajamas.

“What’s with you two?” he demanded. “Listen, you wear the same pair of shoes day after day, you don’t give the shoes a thought. You buy a new pair you walk on air, feel like a million bucks. It’s the same with a woman. If she’s new, it makes your heart beat faster. Maybe it’s the excitement, maybe the danger. For the first minutes a man goes crazy. How long does it take, five minutes, ten? But it’s fresh. Even if it’s worse, it’s better. That manicurist must have some technique.”

“Technique. What’s from technique?” cried Lil.

“Ma, are we eating or not?” Jack announced. “This discussion is over.”

“I’m not going to Florida, Roney Plaza or not,” Lil said defiantly.

“Lil, do what you want. Maybe you should stay home and spend the money on a bedroom set. My back is killing me on that single bed. Or we could buy a couple of soft fancy chairs!”

“The children and I are spending two weeks in Connecticut,” said Lil, and dug into her roast chicken basted with Bubby’s own apricot jam.

Pandy came to the house to help me with my costume and makeup on the night of Miss Sussman’s dramatic presentation. We were touched that she had closed up shop at four thirty to prepare me for the stage. To disguise the dark circles that ringed my eyes, she applied green and yellow powder base.

My eyebrows, a wilderness of unplucked hairs, grew manageable when she spit into a box of mascara and applied the softened soot to my brows. With a black pencil, she outlined the eyes, and pasted fake lashes to my own. From the edges of my eyes into my forehead she drew a wheel of black lines.

“The lines look goofy up close,” Pandy laughed, “but on stage you’ll be Cleopatra.”

“How do you know so much about stage makeup?”

“You think I was always on Clinton Street? Before I fell for Jimmy Paglia, before we run away to Trenton to get married, I was studying stage makeup at a studio on Thirty-ninth and Seventh Avenue. Number-one student. Only my parents, they sat shiva for me. I married an uncircumcised goy. I’ll give Jimmy this, he was, pardon me, you’re so refined, a screwing machine, could go on day and night, alls he needed was a little water to drink. I was passing out from happiness, so when he told me, when he said, ‘Forget Broadway, come back downtown, then we can do it standing up in the broom closet while the women’s hair dries.’ The idea of him and me in the broom closet during work hit the right spot. That’s how I landed on Clinton Street and stayed there.”

I donned a costume from Miss Sussman’s dilapidated wardrobe. Some of the young girls wore Elizabethan-style empire dresses stuffed with tissue paper for breasts. Others twirled velvet capes trimmed with fake fur and wool silk berets with plumes of feathers.

For the occasion Miss Sussman had put on a black evening gown with a bolero jacket and adorned herself with chunky costume jewelry.

A few of the younger performers threw up, wet their pants, could not move a leg forward from fear, but I didn’t miss a cue. I delivered my speeches with authority, and captured the audience packed with relatives and friends who cheered every young actor who appeared on the stage. Even Shirley Feld, who stuttered through “Sweet are the uses of adversity,” basked in her share of applause. Then Miss Sussman joined our ranks and, as instructed, we applauded the audience.

She was glowing like a klieg light as she urged the audience, “Please do stay for refreshments.” An urn of coffee, cookies with sprinkles and small squares of yellow cheese pierced with toothpicks did not stimulate the appetite. Yussie Feld had contributed a basket of fruit, but it remained pristine under its yellow cellophane wrapping. I heard a few ask, “Is there any wine, any soda?”

Our family was the first to leave. “Congratulations,” Jack called out to Miss Sussman and blew her a kiss.

On the ride home Abe informed us, “I heard that two agents, two scouts were there. They thought Clayton was one of them.”

“What a bunch of klutzes,” Jack remarked. “Not for my own daughter the critics would leave in a hurry.” Bubby showered me with kisses.

But the next morning the phone rang as my father ran for the door. Having overslept, his mood was less than sanguine.

“Speaking,” he said curtly. “Today is very inconvenient. It’s our busiest day on Division Street. Tomorrow is my day off.” He listened impatiently.

“If it’s just a half hour I’ll do my best. Between five thirty and six. You have my address? We’ll buzz you in.”

Bubby wiped her hands on a towel. “Abe was right? About the critics?”

“They’ll be here tonight. About a drama scholarship. You know, free lessons. Don’t mention it to Lil. It may be a whole nothing.” He wanted no further distractions.

My grandmother and I had no knowledge of scholarships—the idea was foreign. Bubby suggested that Lil remain in bed for the day, but she laughed at the suggestion; a few hours at Palace Fashions wouldn’t kill her. Later I wondered whether the events of the evening were due to her lack of rest.

Work that day yielded small rewards for both my parents—scores of women but few buyers. They were home by the time the downstairs buzzer sounded at five thirty, before they could change their clothes. Lil kicked off her high heels and took a chair at the table. She showed so little interest in the arrival of the two dark-suited men whom Bubby greeted at the door that she didn’t even bother to apply fresh lipstick or comb her hair. Still, her natural beauty shone through, and the taller of the men, who introduced himself as Bill Schneider, seated himself opposite her. He reminded me of my father—slick, fast thinking, fast talking.

The shorter one with massive wavy hair let out a cry of recognition. “Manya, I’m Saul Green. I ate in your restaurant years ago. The best chef downtown. Are you still cooking?”

“Sit, sit. I prepared our Sunday special.”

Bubby hastened to serve them cheese blintzes sizzling from the frying pan onto heated plates.

Bill Schneider wasted no time in coming to the point: competent, no-nonsense, straightforward. “Saul and I represent a union that sets aside money that we distribute for worthy causes. Some of it is for poverty-stricken families, some for illness and of course money for the arts. We don’t accept applications but when we saw your daughter last night we agreed she could be a candidate for our drama program. Lessons would be paid for by us, for classes or individual instruction at least twice a week. Depending on her skills, she could start auditioning within a year. In other words we will prepare her for a professional career if she wants it.” He did not tear his eyes away from my mother. “Any questions?”

“Who pays for the carfare?”

“If something is bothering you, and I think it is, please share it with us.”

After a moment of hesitation Lil blurted out, “She doesn’t have the looks of Elizabeth Taylor, she can’t sing like Deanna Durbin. She’s plain, skinny. What I mean is, maybe she’s not—” Flustered, she broke off.

Bill Schneider smiled broadly, said nothing. The silence stretched around the table, taut, oppressive. Finally: “You’re talking movie stars,” he said. “We’re discussing theater. The ability to project, to reach out to an audience, means more than conventional prettiness.”

Jack, restless in his chair, took over. “The question is not about carfare or beauty. We’re a theater family. Our daughter has been to Yiddish and American productions for years. She has talent, brains and she’s a fast learner. You were right to choose her.