The Jazz Palace (8 page)

In the fall of 1917 Leo Lehrman took out a loan to hire six Slovakian women who could make the smallest stitches in the world. In the old country these women made lace, sewed the most diminutive of flowers onto lapels, embroidered monograms on the handkerchiefs of gentlemen. They made wedding gowns and tablecloths that would be considered priceless in fifty years. That year, America entered the Great War. Recruiting parades were marching up and down Michigan Boulevard, blasting away on John Philip Sousa, and Leo hired women to sew trademarks onto baseball caps.

They sat, hunched together on one bench, dressed in plain cloth dresses with bright-colored babushkas on their heads. If Benny was early and his order wasn't ready yet, he plunked himself down and watched the Slovakian women pulling thread through the thick denim cloth. He was amazed at the precision of their stitches, the tiny strokes they made so swiftly that the human eye could barely see.

Benny peered at their pursed lips, the concentrated stares at the fabric before them. Leaning forward, he watched the rise and fall of their breasts. Feigning interest in their stitches, he could look down their blouses. If he leaned forward a little more, he saw the dark circle where their nipples began. While he barely noticed the ruby-mouthed women at the tavern where Honey Boy played, Benny couldn't keep his eyes off of these.

One afternoon at the caps workroom the most buxom of the women patted the bench beside her and invited Benny to sit down. She kept sugar candy, the flavor of cherries and oranges, wrapped in paper, in a pocket of her apron. She offered him a piece as if he were a child. When she laughed, her front teeth flashed gold. She was not beautiful, but there was a pungent odor to her that seemed to come from deep inside. Marta had pendulous breasts that swayed with each stroke of the needle. As the thread came through, her breasts rocked forward and, as she pulled the thread out, they fell back.

As he waited for his next round of deliveries, he watched. Like a dog he sniffed her. He wanted to run his tongue along her thick arm and taste her. As he felt the throbbing in his groin, Benny couldn't help but wonder if at last he'd fallen in love. He didn't notice his father, emerging from his office to survey the floor. “Don't just sit around,” his father yelled, causing Benny to leap into the air, which brought tears of laughter down the Slovakian women's faces. “Make yourself useful. Sweep up if you've got nothing better to do.” It angered Benny that his younger brothers had their paper routes and could play ball after school. His father didn't make them sweep the factory floor. Even as he dragged the broom, Benny's eyes lingered over Marta's breasts.

When his father at last told him to go, he gathered up his schoolbooks and left. He climbed the stairs to their apartment and, when he saw no one was home, slipped into his mother's sewing room. The sewing room was the only place in the dark dingy apartment that was not impeccably clean. On the floor Hannah kept a basket filled with bits of cloth. Colored spools hung from hooks, nailed into the wall. Thread was strewn across the floor. Benny never went willingly into this small, cramped space. He only entered if Hannah needed to fit him for a new pair of trousers or to fetch something; otherwise he stayed out.

He couldn't bear seeing the picture of the four of them—the only picture that existed that his mother kept on the dresser. It was in winter and they were all lined up around a sled. In the center was Harold with his crooked smile. There were no other family pictures on display. Leo didn't believe in pictures or keepsakes.
He didn't believe that the past should be commemorated or even remembered.

Benny couldn't bring himself to look at the picture any more than he could bring himself to look at the pencil marks on the wall—the ones Hannah made to show them how much they'd grown. Above each line a name was scrawled. Harold's stopped abruptly a few years ago while the others had gone on, inch by inch, over the years. At the funeral Benny had vowed to name his firstborn after him. Like his mother he had preferred Harold to the others. His brother Arthur never got his jokes, and Ira was the opposite, almost too fast, ambitious for all the wrong reasons. Even as a small boy he tried to sell Benny things he didn't want like a broken toy or a tattered shirt. Ira had get-rich schemes. He wanted to own retail stores. But Harold had that big smile. He'd grinned from the moment he was born. He laughed at shoes, at wooden spoons, at silly faces. He'd laughed at Benny's jokes even though he was too young to understand them. When they crossed the street, he took Benny's hand.

Benny couldn't forget the slackness of the rope that should have been taut. The swirls of thick snow as he staggered, calling Harold's name. What haunted Benny most was an image of his little brother, the smile waning, as he searched for a way back, a doorway to huddle in, a place to escape the cold. Benny did not want to think that Harold had called out for him. That he'd cried as he fumbled like a blind person, shouting his brother's name. Why didn't their names meet somewhere in the center of that storm? Why wasn't there a place where they found each other? Sometimes at night Benny woke up, trembling, thinking he'd heard someone calling him.

The sewing room was the place where Hannah lost herself. Here she allowed cloth to drop to the floor. She could make a mistake and rip it out. Not like the other mistakes she'd made like letting Leo send her boys out in the snow. Then letting him blame it on Benny. It was here that Hannah allowed herself to cry, and when she was done crying, she sewed a hem or fixed a sleeve. She gazed at herself in the mirror and resigned herself to the fact that she was not a pretty woman. She was too dark and small to be pretty, but she was sturdy and trustworthy, and even if her husband had never
really loved her, he respected her. And that, Hannah understood, was something, too.

Though Benny had rarely gone into that room since Harold's death, unless he had to fetch something, now he did. It seemed as if he became lost inside his mother's inner life, the same way as she. She floated here, in a maze of pin cushions and needles, patterns and thread. Once he found the pattern for a small winter jacket and he knew it was intended for Harold. Though years had passed, this still made Benny weep.

But since the Slovakian women had come to work at Lehrman's Caps, Benny found himself drawn to the sewing room. He lived in a household of men and grief. Now it was as if Marta inhabited this room. After school, if no one was home, Benny opened the door and went in. Though the pattern for Harold's winter jacket had been folded away, he was careful not to look at the picture of the four boys in the sled or at the pencil marks of their heights on the wall.

He vanished as his mother did among the scraps of cloth and thread. He touched the spools with his fingers, let his hands wander in the basket of cloth, and thought of Marta with her earthy smells and her golden teeth. As he grew hard, he took a scrap he knew his mother would never miss. Some scraps felt better than others. Wool and denim rubbed him raw. He dug deep into the basket for cotton and flannel and when he found a piece that suited him, Benny sat on the small cot that was usually a clutter of patterns and cloth and envisioned Marta in this room, perhaps at the sewing machine, her pendulous breasts swaying back and forth with each stroke as he leaned forward until he could see the dark crescent where her nipple began.

When he came in the scrap of cloth, Benny tossed it out the window—for the sewing room looked over the open garbage cans in the alleyway. He looked to make sure no one was coming, then took careful aim. Once or twice he had to dash down to the alleyway to retrieve the wad of cloth that missed the can. Then he rearranged the scraps in the basket and tiptoed out of the room.

O
n days when he had no deliveries, Benny raced home. He was in his last year of school and he paid little attention to his studies. Hannah did her shopping in the late afternoon and often, if he hurried, he could get an hour or so alone before anyone arrived. He'd sit at the piano, roughing out whatever ideas he had in his head. Sometimes he just fiddled, trying to remember a tune he'd heard the last time he listened to Honey Boy. He found he could stand in the alleyway and figure out some of the chords. Then he rushed home and tried to remember them.

He lost interest in everything else. Even when Hannah cooked his favorite dishes of chicken with prunes and kasha, he ate with distraction. She would lay ironed shirts on his bed or try to run a comb through his hair. Though she complained that he couldn't leave the house like that, he'd throw on his wrinkled clothes from the day before, grab the dirty cap he wore from his father's factory, and head out the door.

He'd begun wearing the cap a few weeks before when he found it on the cutting room floor. It was a reject with a mismatched seam. He dusted it off, then slipped it on his head. The simple brown cap fit his head as if it had been made for him. It had no trademark or even “Lehrman's Caps” written inside. But Benny liked its blankness. He wore it all the time, even inside the house and during meals, until his father yelled at him to take it off.

One Monday afternoon shortly after he began wearing the cap, Benny got on a streetcar that took him a few miles west. It was a route he knew well, though he had not gone for some time. Once again Benny found himself climbing the dingy stairs. He knocked and at first thought no one was home. He wasn't even sure if his old piano teacher still lived there. He realized how foolish this was—to return after being away so long.

Then he heard the shuffling and soon Mr. Marcopolis opened the door. The odor of tinned fish and stale socks was not so different from what Benny found in his own apartment, and he shuddered with the thought that this was what his life could be. In his wrinkled shirt and uncombed hair, Benny thought he'd end up just like this.

Mr. Marcopolis stared at Benny as he opened the door. “Benjamin, this is a surprise,” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

As he heard the door close behind him, Benny took a deep breath. The apartment hadn't changed since he'd last come for a lesson when he was fifteen. The shelves were still cluttered with ancient books, stacks of yellowed and tattered sheet music, small sculptures of Mozart and Beethoven, an immortal cat named Schubert whose fur was everywhere, teacups and pipes, and a picture of his teacher when he was young and handsome, his hands perched over the keys as he gave a concert in Budapest. “I'm sorry I didn't do better,” Benny muttered.

His teacher nodded. “So am I. You had great promise.”

Benny hesitated. “I never really learned to read music very well, but I want to learn now. I can pay you.” He also wanted to thank him for never telling his mother that he'd stopped coming to his lessons, but he thought better of it.

“And why now, when you haven't bothered before?”

For a moment Benny thought of giving his old teacher an answer he wanted to hear. Instead he admitted, “So I can write down what's in my head.”

“And what is in your head?”

Benny shrugged. “The music I hear.”

His teacher looked at him askance. “What music, Benny?”

“Jass,” he said in a whisper. “I want to write it down.”

Mr. Marcopolis dragged his feet toward the piano. “You've always been playing by ear, haven't you?” Benny nodded, staring down at his shoes. “Yes, of course you have. Would you like some tea?” Benny was surprised since Mr. Marcopolis had never offered him anything before. Without waiting for a reply his teacher shuffled into the kitchen, fumbled around, and returned with a tray of tea, honey, and biscuits. In silence they sipped the tea, and Benny munched on a biscuit that was stale. Then Mr. Marcopolis said, “When I was your age, I already had a concert career. I showed great promise, even from an early age.”

Benny swallowed the dry cookie with a gulp of the tepid tea. “I don't want a concert career.”