Up From Orchard Street (40 page)

Peterson kissed Bubby on both cheeks, shook hands with Clayton, Jack, Goodman, pecked Lil and Aunt Bertha on both cheeks. He applauded the crew. We applauded the crew.

They worked fast and skillfully, especially Blake, whom everyone called the A.D., assistant director. They retrieved the Italian ceramic dishes but left us the food and the flowers. In less than an hour, the art and furniture were gone and the trucks, the security guards and the police cars left.

Orloff hadn’t slept the entire night, and he staggered in, rumpled, sweaty, and unsteady on his feet. “Manya, slivovitz.” He knocked back the fiery liquid in one gulp.

For breakfast we drank Cafe Royale, the heavy cream high in the glasses, and ate French pastries.

“If you could keep one thing and one thing only, what would it be?” Jack asked.

“The white couch,” said Lil.

“The thousand-dollar chairs,” said Bertha.

“The big painting,” Willy and I said in unison.

We waited for Bubby, who placed small value on material things. “Maybe that Italian soup bowl with the handles. Not for using, just to look at.”

Jack raised his glass. “Up from Orchard Street.”

We noticed that he made no requests. Either he wanted it all or none of it.

22

Return to Connecticut

THE CHECK FROM the magazine brought us some relief. The rent was paid and at Bubby’s suggestion, my father bought Willy an inexpensive record player for his records. And on a slow Monday, we set out for Jacob’s store on Canal Street to buy a new outfit for Clayton—his fake leather jacket, his black skinny pants and his shiny shirt had been destroyed in the Harlem riot.

“For you, something special,” Jacob exclaimed, “very uptown stuff. College kids and the young men with new jobs, they love them. I have exactly one suit left and for you, Manya—I can’t tell you how much I miss you upstairs—for you a super bargain: a seersucker suit.”

He slipped the pale blue single-breasted jacket on Clayton. Bubby applauded. “Perfect! He must have it.”

My father had taught his mother long ago that clothes had little to do with protection from the elements. They were magic, to fulfill fantasies. Did Clayton require a seersucker suit to haul out the garbage cans, mop the steps, sweep the sidewalk? Yet in the most profound sense, this suit belonged to him. His image depended on it.

“Bubby,” he pleaded, “I love it, but can you afford it?”

“If I asked what I could afford, I would be living on the Bowery.” She retrieved the money from a
knippl
in her stockings. She still had voluptuous thighs and when she untied the knot Jacob sighed from suppressed arousal. Tears ran down Clayton’s cheeks at the prospect of his new finery.

“Vayn nisht,” she told him. “It’s coming to you.”

Clayton understood—he spoke Yiddish as well as I did—but he still didn’t think he was entitled to such largesse.

Having completed the successful purchase, we rounded the corner to 12 Orchard Street. “Want to see the old neighbors?”

The sidewalk was unswept, the hallway dark—no one had bothered to change the lightbulb. “I’ll help you up the stairs,” Clayton offered, but Bubby couldn’t step forward, immobilized either by memories or by dread. We hastened away from the building.

Before we reached Grand Street, Orloff spied us from his upstairs remnant shop, where a large sign declared, Going Out of Business.

“Manya, Manya!” He clattered down the battered steps. “What are you doing on Orchard Street?”

“Shopping for Clayton, a few things after his accident. I see you’re having a sale.”

“It’s no sale. I’m selling the whole facockta business. Peterson and me, we bought another building on Grand Street, down from the Amalgamated. Peterson named the new building The Garden Terrace. Very fancy. Every apartment has a view of the East River and a terrace. In front is a fountain. Should I save an apartment for you?”

“Orloff, what are you doing? Buying up all New York?”

“Three houses on Grand Street because Peterson, he likes the idea of the Grand Street Renaissance. Then uptown. Already for the building you’re living in, we could sell for a big profit. But not yet. I just spoke to Peterson, he tells me the photographs of your apartment, they’re gorgeous.” His billiard-ball head shone in the sun.

“I have to learn these new words,” he said, laughing, “Renaissance, photo shoots, architecture. I know from fire sales, from burned dreck. Now it’s Orloff, Real Estate.” He paused and searched my grandmother’s face. “You miss Orchard Street? Everyone came to your door.”

“Like love, like children growing up, you close your eyes for one minute, nothing is the same. It was time, more than time, to leave.”

“You can’t leave this minute. My new tenant, he has girls’ clothes, you will cholish when you see them. Five minutes. Hand to God.”

With Orloff pleading and protesting, we walked down to the basement, a windowless space with a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. A young bearded Hassid, his skin pale as alabaster, with an enormous black hat on his head, reigned in the midst of chaos. Clothes-lines extended from wall to wall, the garments attached with clothespins.

As was the custom, you never tried anything on over your head, you held it up to your chin. Orloff appraised me and pulled down lollipop-colored blouses, shorts, two or three dresses. “Take, take. I hear you are going back to Connecticut. For Connecticut you need these things.”

“Orloff,” Bubby protested, “for two weeks in the country it’s too much. I don’t know if I brought enough money, discount or not.”

In this miserable space where we had difficulty breathing, Orloff stopped in his tracks. “Manya, you’re a good giver, but a bad taker,” he said firmly. “I’m giving your granddaughter a present. Manya, I’ve loved you many years. You thought it was a joke. Maybe you thought I was a joke. Don’t shame me talking about money.”

“Thank you,” Bubby and I said simultaneously.

We held my outfits in our hands—the makeshift store had neither bags nor paper—and we trooped upstairs in silence. Bubby didn’t protest when we reached the street and Orloff’s lips grazed her cheek. The outing had exhausted her. We hailed a cab for the few short blocks up Grand Street.

Lil had been shopping. When she heard the taxi door slam, she greeted us in the lobby wearing a white two-piece sunsuit. “Ma, how do you like this? Isn’t it stunning?”

“Twenty years old you look, not a day older.”

“Would you believe the halter has a built-in bra, a halter with an uplift? You know what that proves? You can’t believe anything you see in the movies.”

Finally, finally, we left for Colchester, Connecticut. Abe’s taxi glided to a stop in front of our house at 5:30 in the morning. Since the meter wasn’t running Willy sat in the jump seat beside Abe while Lil and I stretched out in the back.

Driving with Uncle Geoff the year before, tension and fear had overwhelmed us. Each mile became an endurance contest. With Abe, the reverse was true. He told jokes and recited off-color limericks. The one that sent him into peals of laughter concluded with the line, “He put it in double / without any trouble / and instead of coming / he went,” then excused himself if he offended Lil. He read the Burma Shave ads along the road with gusto. We laughed or yelled, “I have one! I have one!” meaning a joke or a funny story. Once we grew alarmed when he swerved off the highway. “Why are you stopping?”

“We’re halfway there,” he answered with pride. “I’m treating to cherry Cokes.”

We didn’t enter the truck stop—Abe took his duties seriously and didn’t want the family in contact with tough men and their sour-smelling armpits. Willy slurped down his Coke in a few gulps and smacked his lips.

“It’s the caffeine,” Abe explained grandly. “One cherry Coke has more caffeine than two cups of coffee. On the road, a couple cherry Cokes, you stay awake and don’t fall asleep at the wheel.”

He jingled change from his pants pocket and headed for the public phone booth. We thought he had been checking in with Rocco, but he smiled. “I called the farm, said we’d be there in two hours, tops. I called Jack and told him the same.”

“That was very nice of you.”

“Hey, you folks from Westchester County expect service.”

I wondered: where had he heard last year’s lie, that heavy burden, about our living in Yonkers? Happily, this season we could declare that we moved downtown to relieve my father of the long commute to his business.

But despite this freedom, the closer we drew to Colchester, the more silent we became. Not out of shyness or fear, but because this place was our enchanted hideaway and we had endowed it with storybook quality.

Abruptly, the village green rose before us. We clapped and cried, “We’re here, we’re here!”

A creature of habit, I wanted every detail to remain the same as the year before. But a few yards out of the village we saw change.

“The road is paved. It’ll be paved straight to the farm,” I protested.

“I’m glad. I hated the stones in my sandals when we walked,” Lil replied.

“That’s what I liked. Roads with ruts. That’s what made it the country.”

“You and the country! Brooklyn is the country with sidewalks.”

“Don’t drive too fast. I want to see everything. Look, Gladkowski’s farm is gone—the trees, the rocks, the fence for the cows. No more cows.”

“I say it’s an improvement. Not a farm, but a real hotel,” Lil observed.

I hate it, I thought, but restrained myself.

We edged to the entrance of the hotel and halted. Estelle was leaning against the railing of the porch, peering down the road. “They’re here!” she shouted. Her red-orange hair matched her orange shirt. She wore white shorts held up by white suspenders.

“How you children have grown! You’re both ten feet tall.” Estelle couldn’t say more. Lil had fallen into her arms. They held each other.

Emerging from the shadows of the tiny lobby, I saw him, in his shorts with multiple pockets, his chest bare and brown, his long wavy hair bleached by the sun as if the skies had poured peroxide on it. He walked toward us in slow motion, taking small measured steps in his sandaled feet, half wild, infinitely beautiful.

Men are referred to as handsome but Maurey was beautiful. He dominated the canvas and crushed the frame around it. Squinting his eyes against the brilliant light, he delivered a heart-stopping, hypnotic message to Lil as she stood entwined in Estelle’s embrace.

Standing on the lowest step of Pankin’s Farm at the noon hour as Maurey approached, I resigned myself to one unwavering fact: my mother was in danger, our family was held together with spit. In one second she could leap into Maurey’s arms. I was afraid.

The sudden appearance of Hal and Gabe bearing a straight-backed chair decorated with wildflowers broke the spell. Gabe looked taller and thinner to me, rusty-haired and befreckled; Hal sober and sad-eyed. Neither had had his hair cut since graduating from med school. They hoisted Lil into the chair, and cried, “Hold on tight!” and carried her up the long flight of stairs to our old room. Lil whooped, “Don’t drop me, don’t drop me!” until she was out of breath and the young men announced, “We did it! Top of Mount Everest. You’re the tops.”

To my joy, the smell and furnishings of our old room had not changed. But when I ran to the window, instead of the barn I saw three new cottages with wide terraces, their ledges filled with window boxes full of blazing flowers.

“It’s beautiful, but where’s the barn?” I leaned so far out the window that Hal drew me back. Then he led me to the end of the hall and up a half flight of stairs to the attic room.

“This is yours. We fixed it so you can read and write in privacy. How do you like the window seat? We killed ourselves to finish it on time.”

In the room there was a single cot, a small table piled with yellow legal pads, an entire box of number-two lead pencils, a pencil sharpener and a lamp. A hand-lettered sign on the door read, Quiet, Genius at Work.

“I could stay here forever!” I cried. I meant it. The young men who bestowed this enormous gift on me laughed and clapped their hands. I dug my nails into my palms to stop my tears.

After a snack, they persuaded Abe to nap in Aunt Bea’s old room before returning to the city. Then, one by one, the young men drifted downstairs, but not before Gabe checked Lil’s pulse. “I’m the resident cardiologist this year. Hal is changing his specialty.” He smiled at Lil. “You’re doing just fine.”

“Mother, I’m so very happy to be here,” I told her.

“Me, too.” Her face was soft, loving, luminous. She cradled in her bed with closed eyes. I went upstairs to my attic room where I slept.

Compared to our shower on Grand Street with its mauve tiles and magnetic shower head that poured hot water like sizzling champagne, this country contraption was a sorry affair; the old-fashioned hexagonal floor tiles smelled of disinfectant and the water spurted in a mere trickle. But showers didn’t matter. Tiles didn’t matter. Wrapped in the thin towel, I didn’t glance at myself in the mirror. Tall now but still shapeless, with no indentation to mark my waist, I still had a straight up-and-down body, skin and bones. I said a silent thank-you to Mr. Orloff for providing my white shorts and navy blue knit shirt.

Willy rolled off his bed and held his head under the faucet of the sink, shaking his face back and forth like a baby seal, drops of water dribbling down his shirt. That was his way of indicating his happiness at being in Connecticut.

Once outside we oohed and aahed at the new cottages, but mostly at the site of the uprooted garden patch, now covered with fresh grass. Glass tables with colorful umbrellas provided shade. The wicker chairs had been replaced by lightweight aluminum frames webbed with yellow and green.

The two mahjong ladies greeted us effusively. “We thought you’d never get here,” they told us.

“We couldn’t stay away. We wouldn’t dream of it.”

The plumper of the two, in her usual sack dress, asked, “How do you like the improvements? They’ll be calling it ‘Pankin’s Country Club’ next.”

My mother stretched out on an aluminum chaise. “Our room is the same.”

Not surprisingly, the evening meal was disastrous: meatloaf thickened with oatmeal, succotash on the side. We settled for their famous tomatoes topped with sour cream. But Estelle saved the evening by telling us about her recent trip to California with her husband and Gabe—a present for Gabe’s graduation from medical school.