Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue (36 page)

Ruth shrugged.

"You know what I sometimes think?" said Nathan, putting his arm around his mother's shoulder and staring at the troubled East River. "There are a lot of things men do and they are understood, but as soon as a woman does it... You are entitled to a living for your family, too."

"That's nice, Nathan," said Ruth, patting his cheek the way she did when he was a small and earnest boy "But I'm not as innocent as you imagine. Boyoboy You know what I did?"

"What?"

Ruth sighed. "We should all be more like Mordy." She threw more bread in the water. Then she turned to face her son. "I did something really terrible. Not everything can be cast off and forgiven."

Nathan stopped asking, and they stood there in silence. Ruth turned back toward the river. "Just before the war, Nusan wanted to come here. The whole family. They were desperate. I wouldn't help them."

Nathan looked at his mother.

"I didn't understand. We didn't understand. There were almost a dozen of them—brothers, sisters, parents, aunts and uncles, even one grandmother. We had to agree to take them all in, house them, feed them. They had no skills. They didn't even speak English. They were shtetl. They would have turned Avenue A back into a shtetl. They were everything Harry had escaped. Literally. He came here to get away from his family and their life. You hear of Jews fleeing the Cossacks, the pogroms. Harry fled the
mespuchak
He was running away from his family And happily for him, they didn't want to leave. But then they had to, and we didn't know what to do. You know this country was very anti-Semitic at the time. These people were like a provocation. We would have had a lot of trouble if this neighborhood had started filling up with them. And Harry would have been right back in the place that he had just escaped. But we had to do it. So, oboy, we talked and debated. And thought and agreed that it was what we had to do, and by then the Nazis had taken Poland and you couldn't get them out. Then Hitler killed them all. We didn't know that Hitler was going to kill them all. Who would have thought that? We heard that. We even read pamphlets that claimed it. But who would believe it?"

Nathan could see the tears gathering in his mother's eyes. He wanted to comfort her, but she pushed him away.

"I haven't told you the worst. And this was not your father, it was completely my stupid idea. We sent them money. Can you imagine? The Nazis got it all. It was like paying the Nazis to take them."

Nathan thought of how he struggled to live with his choices. Karo-line. Not going to the
cuchifrito.
He put his arms around his mother and held her safe under the menacing bridges. But she pushed away again. "So now you know."

She started to walk away and then turned and came back to the rail. "Nathan," she said, "I've been talking to your father. He comes to me every night."

Nathan nodded with understanding.

"You too?"

Nathan nodded, not looking at her.

"It's so real. To tell you the truth, we haven't been getting along of late. Every night he's crabbing. The whitefish at Saul's isn't good anymore. It is better on Grand Street. I tell him that Saul Grossman is convenient. I don't want to walk to Grand Street. He says I can get them when I go for bialies. I say, What do you care, you're dead. That's no excuse, he says. And then he starts in on the seltzer delivery, which he says is a plot. By delivering seltzer, they are getting a list of where all the Jews live, like they did in Europe. Oh, and suspending alternate side of the street parking on Jewish holidays is philo-Semitism, he now says. Just anti-Semitism in disguise. This is the meshuggas I listen to every night. Boyoboy, he is a bigger nudnik dead. Do you think this is some way of telling us that his spirit is still alive, in us?"

"I don't know," said Nathan. "It just happened to me one time... twice."

"But if he's coming back as a spirit, why isn't he more—I don't know—more spiritual—and not such a nudge? And can I ask him things, like where is the title to number 425? But it's my dream he comes in, and I don't remember these things while I'm dreaming— which makes sense—I mean, I'm asleep. But what about him? He's dead and still he's remembering things like the whitefish at Saul Grossman's."

Not expecting an answer from Nathan, she quietly started walking back into the neighborhood. Sarah saw her leaving and took her hand. The two walked back holding hands, Ruth weighted to the ground, Sarah skipping, like a balloon tediered to Ruth by an outstretched arm.
"Feygele, feygele, pi-pi-pi,"
they chanted together.

"Vu is der tate?"
Ruth sang gently

"Nishtahie,"
Sarah shouted.

"Vos t'er brengen?"

"A fesek bit"

Little bird, little bird, peep-peep-peep. Where is your daddy? He's not here. What will he bring? A mug of beer.

"You haven't thrown much bread," said Sonia, her curly blond hair vibrating in the swirling river winds at the edge of Manhattan. "No good sins this year?"

Nathan always suspected that Sonia knew about Karoline. But he would not confess. Karoline had insisted that he would, and he had sworn that he never would. He was not going to let her be right about that. Living with his lie was the only honor he had left. Like Karoline and, for that matter, the Democratic National Committee, he hoped that in time he too would forget this past summer.

"I'll tell you a good sin, if I'm not limited to last year," said Sonia.

She's bargaining, Nathan thought. Going back in the archives to get something really good so that I will match it. But no matter what it is, Nathan was resolved that he was not giving up Karoline.

"I slept with Mordy."

To his own surprise, Nathan's first reaction was to laugh. How did Mordy do it?

"Not now. Years ago. When we were first dating."

"A lot?" The pain was setting in.

"One time. I was panicking. I had come to New York to be a bo-hemian, a free spirit, an artist. And I was getting deep into this Jewish family with the photocopy guy."

"The photocopy guy? And what was Mordy?"

"I know. It was stupid. And every time I see the photocopy guy, if it's just been a few hours you were away, I feel that I love my life because you have come back."

Nathan reached over and took some bread from her hands and tossed it over the fence into the river. "Gone."

"Yeah," Sonia said, smiling. "Gone."

And they turned their back to the river, now filled with floating scraps of bread, the sins of New York rushing out to sea, swirling quickly down the thick and soupy East River, spinning in circles as though someone had pulled the plug in New York Harbor. Nathan and Sonia walked together, his arm around her shoulder.

"We should take a vacation sometime," Nathan said pensively.

"That would be nice."

"It's okay if I bring along my mother?"

Sonia started laughing.

"What?" Nathan said. "It would cheer her up. I asked her where she would like to go and you'll never guess what she said."

"Puerto Rico?"

"Iceland."

"You're kidding."

"Where would you want to go?" Nathan asked.

"Really? You won't laugh?"

"Where?"

"Yellowstone Park," she confessed.

"Yellowstone Pa ... Why?"

"I want to see the geyser, and the bears. And I miss mountains."

"I always wanted to go to Carlsbad Caverns."

"What do they have?"

"Bats, I think—"

"Oh," said Sonia. "Sarah got into a preschool."

"With swimming lessons?"

"I don't know."

"Learning swimming is important. It says so in the Talmud."

Nathan knew that he would never again taste that dangerous hunger. He would never dare, though it might occasionally visit him in a dream, just as Klara had intruded on Harry's sleep unexpectedly all his life. Nathan would have to live with his lie. That was Karoline's curse on him. And he knew that it was not his dreams that he needed to worry about. Someday, in a dark tunnel under Manhattan, a nameless demon would once again, without warning, grab him by the throat and cut off all the air.

N
ATHAN AWOKE
remembering his dream. The sidewalk was lined with palm trees that hissed in the breeze, and the sun was so bright that it hurt his eyes. He saw Birdie Nagel in a sundress with a green parrot perched on her shoulder. And Mrs. Skolnik in a red-and-white bathing suit with a red wraparound skirt and large red-and-white hoop earrings. Arnie was sitting on the sidewalk in a turquoise shirt with red parrots and green leaves. He was sitting under a hot pink parasol that was torn and a little faded, and he was still wearing his wool beret but had a pink flamingo pin stuck on it.

"I found it on the beach," Arnie explained, and Nathan knew he meant the umbrella.

"God, it's great to see you. I thought you were dead."

"You know, they ship you to Staten Island and then to Boca."

Suddenly he heard someone singing. Nathan recognized it. It was Irving Berlin.

I'm going on a long vacation,
Oh, you railroad station,
First in years, so give three cheers...

"Dad?"

It was Harry Nathan ran up to him, but on the way, still dressed in army fatigues, he saw Finkelstein, who had died at Khe Sanh.

"How could you be here?"

"How? What do you mean, how? I'm from the neighborhood. They offered me a package—car rental included, medium compact!"

When Nathan woke up and reviewed this dream, he remembered that neither Arnie nor his father was going to show up in Boca or anywhere else. Harry did not exist anymore. His existence had been canceled. Like Ruth, Nathan understood this but could not comprehend it.

"What's this about being Italian?" Chucho Vega wanted to know.

"There was no future in being a Puerto Rican grocer," said Felix. "The Italians are doing well. The Puerto Ricans are going out of business. Let's face it, the
Loisatda es cast acabado.
This neighborhood is finished."

"Yeah," Chow Mein said reflectively, stroking his stubby ponytail by the side of his neck.
"Fartik.
Finished. Like boogaloo."

"No," said Felix. "Boogaloo might come back. But this is
gastado, acabado, finito, se acabo
—it's over."

SAL FIRST'S CAPONATA

This is my mother's recipe. Any other way of making caponata and they would just laugh at you in Palermo.

2 nice big eggplants
Sicilian sea salt from Trapani
Olive oil, cold-pressed, virgin Sicilian—don't use that stuff from Tuscany
and Italy, and if you use Spanish, you should shoot yourself
1 large onion, sliced
3 ripe plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
1 cup Sicilian red wine vinegar—if you use French, you'll be sorry
2 tablespoons Sicilian salted capers, soaked and dried
1 cup of the big Sicilian green olives
Freshly ground black pepper

Cut the eggplant into small cubes. Let stand in salt for 2 hours.

Heat the olive oil in a skillet with I cube of eggplant. When the eggplant starts to sizzle, add the rest.

In a separate pan, saute onions and tomatoes and then a bit of water. After 10 minutes, add the rest of the ingredients and cook for another 10 minutes. Nothing else! Leave it alone.

SAL A'S CAPONATA

2 nice big eggplants
Salt
Olive oil
1 large onion, sliced
4 ripe plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
2 teaspoons sugar
1 cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons Sicilian salted capers, soaked and dried
1 cup of the big Sicilian green olives
½ teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder
Freshly ground black pepper
2 ounces blanched sliced almonds

Cut the eggplant into small cubes. Let stand in salt for 2 hours.

Heat the olive oil in a skillet with I cube of eggplant. When the eggplant starts to sizzle, add the rest.

In a separate pan, saute onions, then add tomatoes and a bit of water. After 10 minutes, add the rest of the ingredients except the almonds and cook for another 10 minutes.

When finished, sprinkle top with sliced almonds.

ROSA'S FRIDAY
BACALA POMIDORA

Buy only a nice, well-cured
bacala
that you can grab by the tail and the whole thing will stick straight out like a board of wood. Soak for 3 days. Keep changing the water. For the last 24 hours, pinch off a taste from time to time. It should taste not too salty, but a little. Be careful not to soak all the salt out, or the curing, the soaking, the whole thing was for nothing.

Fry the fish in virgin olive oil. Heat a tomato sauce that can be made only in the summertime from ripe summer tomatoes skinned, seeded, and simmered slowly with a pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar and fresh-picked oregano leaves. Pour the sauce over the fish. The sauce freezes well to use the rest of the year.

SAL FIRST'S SICILIAN
BACALA

First of all, forget about this Neapolitano thing with all the tomatoes. You soak the
bacala
until it is soft, then you saute it in Sicilian olive oil with 2 chopped tomatoes, I teaspoon of soaked salted capers, and a handful of fresh oregano leaves.

Then—this is the part I don't like to talk about—you get one of those little hot green peppers and chop up only half of it and saute it with the tomatoes and capers.

CONSUELA'S
BACALAITOS

I remember in Puerto Rico,
bacalaitos
were sometimes full of chopped vegetables, especially red and green peppers, which made them very colorful. But when making
bacalaitos,
it is essential to understand that a lot of people like
bacalao,
but
everybody
likes garlic.

Buy a I-pound box of salt-cured boneless
bacalao.
Soak the cod in water until it is soft—anywhere from 15 minutes to a day. Take equal amounts of cold water and flour and mix into a batter. It is nice to soak the fish in advance and then use that water for the batter. Add 7 or 8 finely chopped garlic cloves, a pinch of hot pepper, a little finely chopped cilantro. Chop fish into small pieces and work it into the batter with a wooden spoon or potato masher until you have a smooth but still liquid batter. If it's not liquid, work more water into the batter.

Heat cooking oil, olive is good, in a skillet until very hot, and carefully drop dollops of batter in. If the batter is the right consistency, it will spread out flat. Turn after 1 minute, and after both sides are brown place on a paper towel, which will absorb excess grease.

MRS. RODRIGUEZ'S NUYORICAN
CREAM
PASTELES

I make several
pastdes,
but these are my best, the ones I make for Christmas Eve. If they do not make them this way exactly on the island-we-love-so-much-we-all-had-to-leave, it's because these are better, no matter what certain snobs like to say.

Before you can
make pastdes,
you have to make some chicken broth, though the people in Cabo Rojos who are so fine use only water. But here in America, where we don't have to live on bananas and snails, we sometimes like to take a big hen and cook it slowly in water with onions, oregano, cilantro, garlic, salt, pepper, and some saffron until the chicken is falling off the bones, and that leaves a very nice broth that can be used in many things, including
pasteles.

To make a
sofrito,
take a pan and heat olive oil. Add achiote seeds, diced cured ham, sliced garlic, I chopped onion, I chopped green pepper, salt, and ground black pepper. Stir until well sautéed and then add 5 skinned, seeded, and chopped tomatoes, a few leaves of cilantro, some leaves of culantro, and some fresh chopped parsley Stir until it becomes a tomato sauce.

To make the filling, take I pound of pork and dice it. Put it in a pan with 3 cups chicken broth and 2 or 3 chopped garlic cloves. When the liquid is about half gone, spoon off I cup to use later. Add a little less than 1 pound of cured ham cut into large chunks, I cup
of sofrito, ½
cup soaked and cooked chickpeas, and ½ cup raisins. Cook slowly with cover for 20 minutes.

To make the
masagrate,
take 10 peeled green bananas, 2 pounds peeled taro root, and 2 pounds peeled potatoes. They should all be grated finely Mix this thoroughly with your fingers and add the leftover stock and ½ cup warm heavy cream. It is this cream to which so many self-appointed guardians of
Boriquismo
object, but that is also why my
pastdes
are best! Stir with a wooden spoon until the batter is smooth as satin and does not stick to the spoon. If it is too thick, add more cream and stock.

To put together, take 12 banana leaves and cut into about 9-inch squares. Fill a baking dish about halfway with hot water. Take a leaf square and dip it in the hot water so that it becomes soft. Pat it dry with a paper towel. Do all the leaves. Lay out the leaves and spread each with a thick coating of masa. Put filling in the center and fold over the leaves into a packet. Tie them shut and place them in a shallow pan of water. Cook for 45 minutes.

This recipe makes 12
pasteks,
but if you make it right, you will need at least twice that many.

CONSUELA'S SATURDAY
GANDULES

When we first decided to leave Puerto Rico, the first English I learned was that
gandules
in English were called "pigeon peas." One of the first things I learned in New York is that no one has ever heard of a pigeon pea. They are
just gandules
or, to Jamaicans, peas. You can buy them here dried and soak them in water for 2 hours with a smoked and split ham hock, some garlic, bay leaf salt, and black pepper. Simmer on low heat for another half hour. If you have prepared I pound of
gandules,
add 2 cups
sofrito
(my
sofrito
is made by sautéeing tomatoes, onions, garlic, green peppers, and little cubes of spanish-style ham in olive oil). Keep simmering another half hour, stirring occasionally.

TED'S PINK MARTINIS
AS MADE AT SAGITTARIUS

These are definitely the martini of the future. Pour vodka into an old shaker (I like the art deco ones). Use a 5:1 ratio of vodka to cranberry juice. Then add equal amounts of triple sec and lime juice, the same quantity as cranberry juice. Add cracked but not crushed ice and stir gently. DO NOT SHAKE!

CHAIM'S ORIGINAL EGG CREAM

Chaim left this recipe to his son in his will, which was fortuitous, even though his son hated the store and sold it to Koreans at the first opportunity. Were it not for the will, his son never would have thought to give the formula to the Koreans, who followed it scrupulously and kept egg creams in the neighborhood.

In a tapered—the tapering is indispensable—paper cup, give 3 good squirts of chocolate syrup, which should yield no more than
2
ounces in the cup. Add 3 ounces of milk that is nearly frozen. It should be the consistency of the slush that we are forced to step in at every intersection of Second Avenue while it is cleared away for nice folk in uptown neighborhoods. But maybe this lack of experience with slush is why no one uptown can make a good egg cream. Fill the cup with seltzer by holding a spoon over the milk so that the seltzer shoots in from the hose, spins off the spoon, and hits the slush with enough force to cause an explosion of bubbles.

SAL FIRST ON HIS MOTHER'S
MINNI Dl VIRGINI

This is my mother's recipe, so you know what I mean. She takes powdered almonds with a little flour and a lot of butter and works it together into a dough, then adds sugar until it is sweet and I egg for about every 4 cups of dough so that it holds together and is easy to work. Chill it awhile. Roll the dough out about ?-inch thick and cut it in circles with an upside-down old-fashioned glass. Put on the center of each a
zuccata
—you know, the long Sicilian squash, soaked in jasmine petals and water and then candied like a preserve.

Sometimes you can buy this already candied or you can take some American squash that doesn't have any taste and is gone to seed. Soak jasmine leaves in water for a day or two. My mother always says "a day," but then how come I see these pots of flower petals around for half a week? Cook the squash (you could even use gourds) until they are tender, and dry them for an hour. It is best to dry them in the sun; my mother dried them on a wall, which is why in New York this is a good thing to make in the summer. Then make a thick syrup with sugar and water and cook the squash slowly, adding about I cup of jasmine water and cooking it down slowly until it is thick and jamlike.

Each circle should have a big hump of the squash. Then you put another circle of dough on top and stick it together with beaten egg white on the edge. You also brush the egg white on top. Then you bake them in the oven until they are browned, and that's it. Eat them while they are still warm, and it's unbelievable. But don't put anything on the top unless you want people to think you are some jerk from Catania who knows nothing.

BERNHARDT MOELLEN'S
ISCHLER KRAPFERLN

This is from Ischl in the part of Austria where they have lakes and salt mines and mineral baths for your health. Wealthy people went for the baths, including the Emperor Franz Josef, and where there are wealthy people there are famous pastry makers.

70 grams, which is 2½ ounces powdered almonds
50 grams, which is 1¾ ounces sugar
100 grams, which is 3½ ounces butter
150 grams, which us 5½ ounces flour

Place all 4 ingredients neatly on a board and work them together with your fingers until you have a workable dough. Leave it for 30 minutes and it will be better. Roll to 1 centimeter thick, very thin, and with a cookie cutter cut circles and bake them in a 180° Centigrade, which is 350
⁰
Fahrenheit, oven for 30 minutes. After they cool, take the circles and make little sandwiches with either apricot or raspberry preserves in the center and cover with melted dark chocolate.

KAROLINE'S
KUGELHOPF

This is not like my father's Austrian
kugelhopf,
which is the eastern extreme of
kugelhopfs.
Mine is the western extreme, from Alsace, and it is much more buttery It is all about how much butter a light pastry can hold. It is made in an earthenware mold, which if used regularly becomes infused with butter so that it doesn't have to be greased before using.

½ cup granulated sugar
1 cup amber rum
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped almonds
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons sugar
2 1½ tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons bakers yeast
2 teaspoons warm water
3¾ cups flour
6 eggs
1 pound butter
12 whole almonds
Powdered sugar

Everything in this recipe must be done in this exact order. The day before baking:

1. Heat the sugar with the rum until the sugar crystals dissolve. Add the raisins and chopped almonds and remove from the heat. Store until tomorrow.

2. In a mixer, dissolve the salt, sugar, and milk.

3. Dissolve the yeast in the warm water until it is creamy.

4. Add the flour to the mixing bowl and mix well with the salt, sugar, and milk.

5. Add the yeast.

6. Beat 2 minutes on a low speed.

7. Add 4 eggs and beat until homogeneous.

8. Add 2 more eggs.

9. Beat on medium speed for 10—15 minutes until it feels silky and no longer sticks to your fingers.

10. Cut up the butter into egg-size pieces and add them to the dough while beating. This must be done quickly and must take no more than 2 minutes.

11. Cover the bowl with a cloth and leave in a warm—not hot— place until the dough doubles in size. This could take as little as 90 minutes or as much as 2½ hours.

12. Slap it to let out the air and reshape into small bowl. Avoid too much handling. Place it in the bowl, cover with cloth, and place in the refrigerator.

13. After 2–3 hours, it will have doubled again. Slap it down once more and leave it to rise overnight in the refrigerator.

The next day:

Butter the mold if necessary If you cannot find an earthenware one, there are many fluted, circular metal molds that provide a hole in the middle. At the bottom of each flute, place I whole almond. They will form a crown at the top once the cake is turned out. Roll the dough into a rectangle. Place the rum-soaked raisin-and-almond filling down the center. Roll the dough into a tube and wrap it around the center of the mold. Bake in a medium oven until the room is filled with the wonderful scent of butter. Take it out and turn it out. After it cools, dust it with powdered sugar.