Frog (45 page)

“My father and my mother's brother parked in the same lot near their offices. My father was a dentist, Uncle Leonard a doctor. This was in 1923 or ‘24. They got to know each other during their walks from the lot to their offices. They kept their cars in a private lot because they were often vandalized or stolen off the street in the neighborhood their offices were in. My father always had the matchmaker in him. Nothing gave him greater pleasure than bringing people together, he said, except making a bundle of money in one killing. ‘Through my practice I knew or knew of lots of single people, and because I felt I was a good judge of character, it was easy for me to hook them up. If it worked out and they happened to throw a new suit my way or a weekend in Lakewood for me because they were so happy, I didn't refuse it.' He introduced Uncle Leonard and Aunt Teddy. She was the daughter of a diamond dealer whose teeth he took care of and who'd told him he was looking for a professional man as a husband for his daughter and was prepared to give a huge cash dowry. ‘I knew he meant me. But when I saw her picture I knew she wasn't my type, so I thought of Uncle Leonard, whose practice wasn't doing too hot. He was a good G.P. but like the rest of your mother's family, had no personality.' My uncle was urging my mother to go out with my father who was attracted to her. She was a beauty contest winner, had been top of her class at Washington Irving, worked as a medical secretary days and danced in a Forty-second Street review nights and matinees, and wanted to be an architect or lawyer. Uncle Leonard brought my father over the house several times but she never took to him. ‘He was bald and fat and though he had a nice small nose he wasn't that good looking, I told my brother. And he'll only get balder and fatter and like everybody's nose, it was sure to grow. I had an image of a slim elegant handsome man for a husband, with a head of hair. And because I wasn't looking for one then and was considered quite pretty and intelligent and my father was reasonably well off, I didn't say boo to him, though practically speaking I knew he was a good catch.' My uncle continued to press her. ‘“Just for lunch once,” he said, “and if there's no spark, I won't nag you again.” There wasn't for me. He was entertaining and personable enough but I felt he'd never be someone I'd be deeply interested in. His mother was everything to him, for one thing, so I knew his wife would always come up short. But he pushed and pushed. Phoned every day. Sent my mother and me expensive presents and flowers. Wined and dined me, few times I consented to go. And he made my dad laugh hysterically whenever he was around him, while no one else had ever got a rise out of him. And my brother, whom I worshiped—he used to say your father was a diamond in the rough who only needed a touch of polishing from me. But he kept insisting he was the most dependable good-natured well-heeled man any girl of my background and education and now “age,” since I was falling on twenty-two, could hope to find and that my dad would never let me go back to school. So, one thing led to another. I never did find him that attractive in all our years of marriage, except when we were dressing formal. He really put time and money on himself then, no handkerchiefs hanging out of his pants pockets, and the shiny black clothes hid his fatness and made him sort of more graceful. There was another beau though whom I was attracted to then. Henry Morton, who was as distinguished and proper as his name, which I think was something else shortly before I met him. Messer or Moscowitz. Maybe if he'd been a little more of a rough-and-tumble guy your father was I would have tried harder to land him. But he acted like a neuter and wanted to amass a fortune before be settled down, and he was only starting out then. He cried uncontrollably when I told him I was marrying your father, but made no counteroffer. If he had I think I would have run off with him, despite what it might have done to my family. He later had children, I understand, so it wasn't as if he couldn't do anything. After I'd had my first two and was very pregnant with you—no matter how hard I dieted you grew and grew and coming out nearly killed me—he came to Prospect Park right across where we lived to ask me to leave your father. As a joke I said “The kids?” and he said “We'll have our own soon after you have that one.” I remember the afternoon clearly. It was bright, sunny and warm. The girl had her midweekly half day off, so it had to be Wednesday. Your brothers were in a sandbox. He popped out of nowhere, I was on a bench knitting, and said he was going to the zoo or just dawdling around taking in the meadows. Later he said he'd been coming out to spy on me for two weeks and had even peeked through the blinds to see me resting in bed. We lived on the first floor of an apartment house: Vera Court it was called, which is how I got the name for your sister. He said he hadn't made his fortune yet but was getting there, and had never stopped loving me, and so on. Seeing how I saw myself as a big block of blubber then it was a nice feeling to be thought of so desirously, even if I didn't like him asking me to give up my children for him. I wondered what he would have asked me to do with you once you were weaned. When I said I couldn't go away with him, even if he agreed to taking along my two-and-a-half children, he cried like a faucet again and that was the last I saw of him, running screaming out of the park and across the avenue, with cars stopping and dodging all around him, or at least by the sounds of their tires and horns I thought they were. For a few days I read the obituary pages thinking he might have killed himself. Anyway, that night I told your father. He said the man must be crazy or was drunk but he'll come out of it. Sometime after he pointed out a wedding announcement of Henry with a girl from high society. Her family—known anti-Semites—couldn't have known he was Jewish. Even the last name of his deceased parents had been changed to his for the announcement. Your father wanted to send an anonymous note to the girl's parents that Henry's real first name was probably Chaim or Herschel—he didn't like anyone but himself getting away with anything. In the end he spoke appreciatively of him as a swindler but not as a man who made it on his own as he had.'”

“My mother had a sweetheart when she got engaged to my father: Howard Morton. I was around forty when she told me this and I said ‘Howard, the same as mine? What was that all about?' ‘Maybe it was Herbert, or Henry. No, it was Howard. I never thought of that before.' ‘You mean you didn't name me after him?' ‘Of course not. Maybe deep down I remembered what a distinguished-sounding name it was. In fact, I can almost bet it helped get him where he got. For I'm sure without it or an equally distinguished first name, and a plain enough last one to go with it, he wouldn't have passed as a Gentile and got into society and rich because of it. He ended up owning trains. I suppose I thought the same thing, in different ways, would happen to you. At the least that people would look up to you a bit more. Little did I know we were coming into an age where people got ridiculed for lofty first names or if they didn't have one that could be shortened to a single syllable and that Jews with the most Jewish names and faces could get into Gentile society without passing.'”

“My mother liked to recall going to the silent movies as a kid. The tickets for anyone under ten were two for five cents. ‘I'd stand outside the theater holding up my two cents and say “I got two, anybody got three?” Then some girl or boy would say “I got three,” and we'd buy the double ticket and go in together.'” No, that was his father.

“His father kept calling, visiting, sent flowers, jewelry, offered to straighten or cap her and her sisters' teeth free, took her to the best shows, restaurants and nightclubs, professed his love every way and any time he could, in taxis, on the street, during intermissions and over food, said he'd make an adoring idolizing husband, she said she'd rather have her spouse ignore or even take a swing at her than that, said ‘OK, no down-on-my-knees like a big jerk and painting your toenails: just solid soulmate loving and lionlike lovemaking or some tumultuous unbridled jungle or forest beast,' she said ‘Please, where do you get these ideas?—not from me,' said he wanted to have five children by her, girls and boys, and when she said she'd always wanted ten and the major majority of them boys but was definitely not thinking of them from him, said ‘Ten then—I can afford to. You won't have to lift a finger. The best hospitals and docs and after-they're-born care. The world? You got it. On a silver platter.' She said that was an awful figure of speech. That heads belonged on silver platters. Cooked turkeys. Aspic molds. ‘No, you're nice and bright and I admire what you've done with your life. From no-shoes-in-the-summer-to-save-on-the-shoe-leather to sending yourself through dental school while working at the post office ten hours a day and ending up with one of the biggest practices on the Lower East Side as you say, but we can only go so far at being good companions and friends. I know lots of pretty girls. I'll introduce you.' ‘Maybe I set my sights too high, but only you.' Her father wouldn't let her go to college to get a profession so she got work for little pay as a secretary. ‘You're beautiful and you're built well and you're not as stupid as most girls your age,' her father said, ‘but your looks won't last forever and you haven't got enough upstairs to only get along on your brains after. Marry him. He's a smart guy and makes everybody laugh. All in all he's the best of the fifty or so beaus you've had. And that he's crazy for you means you'll never have to do a stitch of laundering or sewing and looking after your children if you don't want. You like to read books and go to shows? You'll have all the time you want now, and stuff you buy from bookshops and not have to get from the library, plus two-month summer vacations in the mountains with your kids. Nannies. The boats these days are packed with them, most just wanting a few dollars a week plus room and board. Clean Irish and German girls who'll bring up your children like princesses and chairmen of the board, but with an iron fist so they're not crawling all over you when they're sick or should be asleep.' Finally she said yes. ‘I'm not sure why. He wasn't that bad looking. He had very strong but at the same time delicate hands. He bathed a lot, never smelled. He was humorous and shrewd with money and had a certain animal something that I think as much as any man's matched mine. Nine years older than I but he thought young and seemed in relative good health and didn't drink that much. Deeply drawn to him? Everybody knew me. No man was ever good enough, but I have to admit some excited me a lot more. Maybe because nobody pursued me harder, so I just gave up. If that was it, I must have been nuts.' They got engaged, broke up. He didn't want her to return the ring but his mother sent his aunt to her house to get it. ‘I knew I could do better. And with someone who wasn't as fat and bald and hadn't such a sure-to-ruin-your-life mother. And who still didn't have this thing about his poor past where he had to wipe his nose with coarse paper towels he took in big chunks from restaurants and public toilets and day after day refolded and used the same brown bag he packed his lunch in till it was practically in shreds. Her father said ‘You marry him or I'm throwing you into the street and never letting you back. I was never this dumb since I was a boy but I already gave his mother half the dowry money and now she's calling it earnest gelt and won't give any of it back.' Engaged again. ‘I'm not sure why. My father and brother and that he came to where I worked and said he still wanted my hand and kept sniffling and drooling till I had to say yes so he'd stop. If I had learned later it was all a ruse, just to get a beautiful woman for a wife and as he said to up the odds that he'd have beautiful children, I would have killed him.' Before she met him she'd won several beauty contests, almost became Miss America, danced in the Scandals and then the Follies on Broadway and in a few movies. Turned down a dinner invitation from the Prince of Wales. ‘The type I liked least: a rich roué and lush. He was very gracious when Flo introduced us, and I was told he'd singled me out of the line and then got even more excited when he heard I was well read, but his face was already so depraved that just shaking his hand I didn't know what I'd catch from him. Now I wish I had accepted. Not for any ideas about being the First Wallis Simpson—he wasn't ready for that for years and it'd be too far-fetched to think he'd choose Jewish—but to have had the story.' Wealthy women and men sent her flowers and expensive presents backstage but she returned all the presents and devised ways not to even bump into them after the show, for she said they were hungry wolves out after just one thing. ‘Who wanted to be another pearl on an already lengthy strand? That's what my mother told me she used to think when she modeled for Milgrin's when she was fourteen and every man who came in with his mistress or wife tried to paw her behind. Creeps then, creeps in my time, no doubt creeps now and forever. As for women with women, lots of the other dancers did it and sometimes just for fun they said, but to me nothing could be more repulsive.' His father sat in the front rows or overhanging front loges of the theater almost every night during the last weeks of her stage dancing which was around when he met her. ‘He came in with his cronies—all of them dentists—and said they waved and winked and occasionally whistled and clapped at me whenever I danced near. It never distracted me since I couldn't see them because of the footlights. And I was deaf on my left side where they usually sat—their right—from when a grade-school teacher smacked me when I talked back. Oh, I was always a devil. I don't know what happened to me.' Her brother-in-law stole their car during the wedding reception. His father had bought it new that week, morning of the wedding parked it in front of the wedding hall, planned to drive it to Atlantic City with her after the reception, then back to Manhattan next day to board a ship for a two-week cruise to Cuba. ‘We had it at the Academy of Music, with their orchestra. My mother-in-law wanted Klezmer. That's what her daughter had at hers and I guess it also brought back her blissful old village life filled with ignorance, beatings and poverty, but my father wouldn't hear of it. He wanted couples to dance, maybe a tango or turkey trot or two but mostly civil waltzes. To him there was nobody in the world like Emperor Franz Josef. He had a neighbor do a needlepoint of him in parade dress on a horse, which hung in our living room, and wore his Franz Josef mustache and had many of his mannerisms for fifty years. So he said to her “If you insist they be there, have them come without their instruments. Just to drink and eat and dance and throw up in the lavatories,” which they did. He was a great sport with money and minced no words. The Academy was the swankiest place we could have had it at then, not being old-time Yankee Doodle Jews, and it was done completely kosher. That was against my father's eating tastes and his beliefs and jacked up the price of the reception by more than half, but my mother-in-law, who loved pork and brains at our house, wouldn't come to it if it was any other way. Your father even had to buy his brother a tux for the wedding, and the most expensive there was or he wouldn't show, plus buy his mother a diamond watch exactly like mine and diamond earrings in place of my engagement ring. They had him under their palm, that family, except for his father who was a sweet schnook.' Or his uncle got someone to steal the car, but to use it to transport bootleg whiskey. ‘He slipped out of the party and was gone for hours. Nobody missed him since we had more than two hundred people there, with Cantor Rosenblatt, perhaps the finest cantor of his day and still at the top of his voice, singing during the ceremony. It would be like having Jan Peerce and Richard Tucker both during their heyday. They were brothers-in-law, you know, but I forget which one married whose sister. This was all during Prohibition. In fact Uncle Lewis got my father all the liquor for the party—Dad had folded his bar long ago when he couldn't get liquor legally—but weeks before. My sister was in on that car. Two connivers. She probably said “Go now, I'll cover for you, it's the fuchsia one right outside, anybody ask for you I'll say you ran off with the bride.” She's OK today, too blind and weak to joke or cheat at anything but getting a second shower at her nursing home, but he never stopped being in the rackets till he died. The Syndicate, then Murder Incorporated. For all we know he carried out the contracts or did the body disposing—one of those, or maybe you graduate. I forget what Brooklyn bay most of those bodies ended up in, but it was famous for a while. New York Jewish boys were very big in that then. My brother Robert used to say half his childhood friends ended up in prison and the other half in law school. Whenever he went to Sing Sing to see a client, ten other men in the halls there would yell out “Hiya, Bobby, remember me from Rivington or Cannon Street or P.S. 62?” Lewis once showed us his gun, trying to impress us—he was a little guy so it made him feel strong. But your father told him Lepke himself was a patient of his and that whenever he treated him he demanded he leave his guns in a locked cabinet just for them in his laboratory. Gurah's teeth he'd never treat as he heard he stabbed his dentist from the chair once for no other reason but that the novocaine didn't completely take. They found the car while we were in Cuba. It stunk so such from whiskey that we had to almost give it away. That was pre-vinyl and before fabric treatment, so the cloth just soaked it in. There was even blood on the seats, but probably from one of the bootleggers cutting himself from one of the many broken bottles in it. The homemade Prohibition whiskey was bottled in the cheapest glass. So we took the train to Atlantic City—Lewis and Ellie in front of the Academy throwing rice at us as we left—or borrowed someone's car. Or someone drove us there that night and we took the train back to the ship the next day. Something about cars and trains sticks in my mind though.'”