Last Respects (6 page)

“I don’t understand,” Mr. Smith said.

Why should he? It was not his mother.

“I’m out here in Queens,” I said. “Why can’t I go over to the morgue and identify the body?” Mr. Smith didn’t seem to understand. He looked confused. It occurred to me that he was upset by what he apparently considered my unseemly haste. I said, “What I mean is, there’s no point in my coming all the way back from Manhattan tomorrow morning at eight to do something I can do now, while I’m out here in Queens.” Mr. Smith’s face cleared. “You know,” he said, “that might be a good idea. You’ll get it out of the way and we...we’ll be free to go ahead with the funeral arrangements. In these situations, we see it happen every day, there’s so much to do, a person never knows where to begin.”

T
HAT’S WHERE I WAS ONE
up on Mr. Smith. I knew exactly where to begin. The night the Manhattan Council of the Boy Scouts of America staged the eliminations finals for the 1927 All-Manhattan rally.

At the time the trouble seemed no more than a laundry problem. The Council had scheduled the eliminations for a Wednesday night. But the regular weekly meetings of Troop 244, of which I was senior patrol leader, took place on Saturday nights. Every Friday, therefore, my mother laundered and pressed my uniform. Not because she approved of the Boy Scouts of America or my participation in their program. On the contrary. My mother hated all uniforms, whether they were worn by Cossacks, ushers, Babe Ruth, or her son. But the weekly meetings of Troop 244 took place in the Hannah H. Lichtenstein House on Avenue B between Ninth and Tenth Streets. This was pretty far uptown from our tenement flat on East Fourth Street at the corner of Lewis, where my mother felt safe, and uncomfortably close to what my mother thought of as gentile terrain, where she would not have ventured without a police escort. Also, the scoutmaster of my new troop was an uptown goy named Mr. O’Hare. While my mother continued to ignore my activities as a boy scout, even though I had been one for over two years, she was not going to allow her oldest son to show up on the fringe of enemy territory, and appear in front of a
shaygitz
scoutmaster, looking like a slob.

So, as I said, every Friday she laundered and pressed my uniform, and every Saturday, when the senior patrol leader of Troop 244 showed up at the Hannah H. Lichtenstein House, his profile may have looked somewhat different from that of Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the commander of the garrison at Mafeking who founded the Boy Scout movement after the Boer War, but the starched khaki breeches, the immaculate khaki shirt, and the beautifully ironed blue neckerchief would have done credit to the snub-nosed, apple-cheeked little Norman Rockwell type whose picture adorned the cover of the B.S.A.’s national handbook.

“Wednesday?” my mother said when I asked her on Tuesday if she would launder and press my uniform in time for the eliminations contest. “Every week I wash on Friday. What’s all of a sudden Tuesday?”

“This is something different,” I said.

“Different how?”

My mother spoke only Yiddish and Hungarian. My Hungarian was weak, but Yiddish was to me what Greek had been to Homer. Until this moment I had assumed I spoke it with the same sort of ease. This moment, however, involved an explanation of why the Manhattan Council had scheduled its rally for Wednesday night. Words didn’t exactly fail me. I have always had a capacity for keeping them coming under pretty nearly all conditions. But Yiddish, I saw soon enough, was in this instance proving inadequate. Besides, there was this curious game in which my mother and I were both involved: her pretense that the scout movement did not exist, and mine that I went off in uniform every Saturday night to some sort of vaguely defined social activity. My mother gave me the look she usually reserved for my father at all times, and for any shopkeeper’s first quotation of a price for anything.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. Her tone implied clearly that if she got it any straighter her comprehension could be used as an architect’s plumb line. “You want me to wash and press the khaki shirt and pants on Tuesday?”

“Yes,” I said. “You see, Ma, I gotta have it for Wednesday.”

“And Friday?” my mother said. “You’ll want I should wash and press it again so you can wear it on Saturday?”

“That’s right,” I said. “You see, Ma, this Wednesday thing, the eliminations contest, that’s something special. It’s extra. It has nothing to do with the regular Saturday night meeting.”

“It has nothing to do with me either,” my mother said. “A slave over the washtub for uniforms, this I did not come to America to be.”

It was her constant refrain, her endless quest. Why she had come to America. It was also her exit door from everything she did not want to do.

“But, Ma, I’m the captain of the signaling team,” I said. “You want I should go looking like a slob?”

“Tell them to hold these alimations on Saturday.”

“Eliminations,” I said.

“Whatever they are,” my mother said, “tell them to do it Saturday, so you’ll have the clean shirt and pants I wash on Friday. On Tuesday, no. I’m busy.”

This was preposterous. How could she be busy? All she did was cook and clean and wash for my father and me, my sister and brother. If she was able to wash my uniform on Friday, why couldn’t she also do it on Tuesday?

“Ma, I could get a medal for this.”

“For what?”

“For signaling,” I said. “Morse Code. With a flag. I’m the best in the troop. If we win these eliminations, our troop, we go on to the finals. Everybody who wins in the finals, they get a medal.”

“So you be different from everybody,” my mother said. “You win in a dirty uniform.”

I didn’t doubt that I could. According to Mr. O’Hare I handled a Morse signaling flag with more skill than anybody he had ever known. Not to be dishonestly modest about it, the main reason Troop 244 had managed to get as far as the eliminations finals in the 1927 All-Manhattan rally was my dexterity with a Morse signaling flag. I was secretly convinced I could carry the troop into the
final
finals and go on to win the rally. But somehow, I don’t know why, I didn’t want to get up there in a soiled, unpressed uniform. So I took my problem to George Weitz, my teammate.

“You are a
shmendrick,”
said George. “But you are one hell of a signaler.”

At fourteen, I thought I was pretty grown up. I did not think I was a
shmendrick.
But I did not think I was St. Francis of Assisi, either. On East Fourth Street in those days, I was trying to do what everybody else was trying to do: hang in there. I did not know this, of course. Years went by before I realized what had been wrong. I was bucking a tide without even being aware that I was immersed in water. Every adult on the block was an immigrant from some part of Central Europe, and every child was, like George Weitz and myself, a first-generation American. We talked to each other like illiterate diplomats. The simplest communications were papal encyclicals in garbled syntax. But not when I was talking to someone like George. George was on my side. I liked George, but I did not like being called a
shmendrick.

“You say I’m a
shmendrick
because I beat you for senior patrol leader,” I said. “If you’d beat me, I’d say you’re a
shmendrick.
But never mind that. I want you to do me a favor.”

“Like what?” George said.

George was a funny one. He didn’t really live on our block. He lived one block west, in a brownstone between Avenue C and Avenue B. There were no brownstones on our block, Fourth Street between Avenue D and Lewis. Ours was a block of tenements, and they were all pretty much alike. The tenement we lived in, for instance, at the corner of Lewis Street, was typical: thirty-two flats in the six-story “front house” which faced Fourth Street, and thirty-two flats in the “back house” which faced a courtyard full of ash cans. But George Weitz lived in a small narrow house, all four floors of which were occupied by the Weitz family. Nobody thought this odd. George’s father was a doctor. The Weitz family had moved in a short time ago, after Dr. Gropple died. Doctors were different. They were rich. They had servants. One of the servants the Weitz family had was known on the block as a “fat stupid Polish slob,” who was in fact their only servant. She cooked, she cleaned, and scrubbed—there were some smart alecks on the block who said she did other things for Dr. Weitz—and she did the Weitz family laundry.

“Could you get your girl to wash and iron my uniform?” I said.

“What’s the matter with your old lady?” George said. “She’s all of a sudden a cripple?”

“No, but she’s busy on Tuesday,” I said.

“Doing what?” George said.

“What difference does it make?” I said. “She washes my uniform on Friday for the Saturday meeting. But this is for Wednesday. She can’t do it. She’s busy on Tuesday.”

“Doing what?” George said again. “Putting double hemstitches on the new Passover line at Meister’s Matzoh Bakery?”

It was the sort of thing George Weitz was always saying. He was known on East Fourth Street as a smart-ass. I’d never heard of Meister’s Matzoh Bakery. My guess was that neither had George. But things went on inside his head. Whatever they were, he enjoyed them. George made up those things inside his head, then he said them out loud. But he was not a bad guy. Besides, he was my reader-receiver on the Morse team.

“It’s just the breeches and the shirt,” I said. “My neckerchief is still clean. I could bring them over after school and you could put them in your family laundry. What the heck, George, your girl won’t know the difference.” It seems odd to me now that on East Fourth Street we said heck when we meant hell.

“Okay,” George said. “But don’t tell the Feds.”

It was a George joke. Not funny, perhaps, but part of what a stand-up comic would call his routine. It was the sort of thing he always signed off with. Don’t take any wooden nickels. See you in church. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Keep punching. Now it was don’t tell the Feds. I didn’t tell anybody. I just went home after school and dug out my khaki breeches and shirt, and my mother caught me.

“What are you doing?” she said. I told her. “No, you’re not,” she said. “In my family, if anything has to be washed, I’m the one that does it.”

Even now I wonder if she said it with irritation or with pride. Anyway, she did it. On Wednesday night, therefore, when I met George Weitz on the corner of Avenue C and Fourth for the walk to the Hannah H. Lichtenstein House, the crease in my breeches moved crisply an inch or two ahead of my legs, the starch in the collar of my khaki shirt was eating away at my Adam’s apple, and my blue neckerchief looked like the sky over East Fourth Street on a hot summer day.

“I thought you were bringing over your uniform for our girl,” George said as we started up Avenue C toward Ninth. “What happened?”

“My mother changed her mind,” I said. “She found the time yesterday to wash it.”

“Meister’s Matzoh Bakery probably gave her a day off,” George said.

I could see where Meister’s Matzoh Bakery, whatever that was, had moved into George’s head and settled down for a long stay. It was going to be the joke of the week, maybe month.

“Be funny later,” I said. “Now just please concentrate on Morse. We gotta win this thing.”

“We’ll win it,” George said. “None of these shmohawks from uptown can handle a Morse flag the way you and I can.”

The “you and I” did not send me. George Weitz was not in my league. But I decided to let it go. He had more than a cockamaymey sense of humor. He had a temper. This was no time for a fight. Besides, let’s face it, George was the second best reader-receiver in the troop. He was entitled to say “you and I.” Suppose he had said “I and you”?

“Maybe they can and maybe they can’t,” I said. “We still have Mr. Krakowitz to worry about.”

“You’re not kidding,” George said. “That jerk. Jesus.”

I wondered about George’s vehemence. I was not so sure that Mr. Krakowitz was a jerk. I mean, I’d never seen him do anything real rotten. There was no doubt, of course, that he was a pain in the ass. You didn’t have to be rotten to be a pain in the ass. Not in 1927 anyway.

Mr. Krakowitz owned a men’s clothing store on Avenue B, between Fourth and Fifth, four blocks down from the Hannah H. Lichtenstein House. Some of the guys, guys like George Weitz, for instance, said Norton Krakowitz didn’t give a damn about the boy scout movement. He was in it for business reasons. He wanted to draw attention to his clothing store by posing as a public-spirited citizen. Norton Krakowitz? Owner of Krakowitz Men’s and Boys’ Clothes on Avenue B? A very good man. Works on the Boy Scouts. Some kind of executive on the Lower Manhattan Council. Spends a lot of time with the youngsters. Because he wants to help boys to grow up to be good men. Your son needs a suit for the High Holidays? Buy from Krakowitz. He deserves your patronage.

Anyway, that’s how some people felt. If I didn’t, or if I wasn’t sure I did, it was because it wasn’t till my bar mitzvah that my father bought me the one suit I had. I mean a whole suit. Pants and a jacket. Before that I even went to
schul
on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in the pants my father sewed for me himself and the sweaters my mother knitted for me. My feelings about Mr. Krakowitz were based mainly on the way he discharged his duties as a member of the Executive Committee of the Lower Manhattan Council. He enjoyed himself. It does not seem now to be a valid reason for disliking somebody, but now is different from 1927. I was fourteen in 1927.

Norton Krakowitz liked to sing in public, and he was crazy about Shakespeare and the Bible. On Saturday nights, after he shut up shop, he roamed the Lower East Side, from Delancey Street to Avenue B, dropping in for a few minutes each on all the settlement houses that housed boy scout troops under his jurisdiction. I have no doubt, even though I cannot substantiate my certainty by actual eyewitness evidence, that Mr. Krakowitz filled each one of these few-minute sessions in exactly the same way that he filled the few minutes he spent with us every Saturday night in the Troop 244 meeting room at the Hannah H. Lichtenstein House.