Frog (43 page)

Weak, weak, but suggests what's on his mind. Mother then. When? Long time ago, try; when he was a boy, start. “He throws something—a hammer—was aiming for the closet with the tool chest on the floor next to it, the closet next to the breakfront with the opened tool chest on the floor, the tool chest on the floor of the closet next to the breakfront, I threw a hammer at the tool chest on the floor of the opened foyer closet but it went through the breakfront next to it. My folks were away for the weekend in Old Saybrook. Gil Dobb's the resort was called. Gil, they said, served two-pound lobsters for lunch, inch-and-a-half thick veal chops for dinner, grew and cut flowers which he put in vases on the dining room tables every meal, ironed the tablecloth himself sometimes so it was done right, sold antiques in his antique barn, was a
fagele
whose longtime companion was rarely seen on the grounds and never ate at Gil's table in the dining room. They went there every fall for their anniversary and my mother always came back with some of Gil's antiques (hand-painted plates to hang, converted kerosene lamps, chamber pots, soup tureens, creamers, something else she liked to collect whose name he forgets—Toby mugs), his father with a big basket each of apples and pears and a few dozen freshly laid eggs. I was scared they'd punish me, my mother especially (my father would probably just call me a stupid kid and say what I'd done was only to be expected), since the breakfront was originally her mother's and had some prized objects in it, none broken and many bought from Gil. But when they got home around dinnertime Sunday night—” No, weak, but just see what comes out by finishing it. Shouldn't take long. “They came home the next night. He was worried the whole day. He was told by his brothers to go straight up to her and say he broke it. He did. She still had her coat on, his father had just set down a basket of fruit and asked the boys to help him with the rest of the things in the car. But he quickly told her. ‘Mom, the breakfront, look at it, I broke it.' She looked, got on one knee, put her hand through the place where the glass had been—a quarter-section of the breakfront, he doesn't know who took the broken glass out before his parents got home—and waved and said ‘Yo-hoo, here I am, how's my baby boy?'”

Weak, uninteresting, ends up well for her though, but what else from then? She once took him and his sister Vera to see Santa Claus. This one's stayed around; see where it leads. “Carla and George walked through a dimly lit corridor with their mother to get to the elevator to see Santa. Elves greeted them from behind reindeer and trees, some littler than he but with high grownup voices, one handed them each a wrapped present. An elf ran the elevator. It went straight up to Santaland, he thinks it was called. Christmasland. Toyland, it had to be.” The present was handed them right after they saw Santa. “They were the only ones in the elevator. It was decorated like a snowed-in log cabin. The elf hummed a tune to himself as the car rose. Was he instructed to or maybe even not to? This wasn't in George's mind then. A carol was being sung from somewhere in the car, but a different tune than the elf's. He remembers his mother said this wasn't just any old Santa they were going to but one they had to pay for. Hence the present. The corridor upstairs was also dimly lit and ended with a long line of waiting kids and their parents. They'd passed two other Santas in their rooms but were directed by an elf to this one. He doesn't remember sitting on Santa's lap. Santa wasn't old, seemed if he stood up he'd be as tall as a circus giant, had no belly. An elf wanted to take a photo of him with Santa and then Clara and him with Santa but both times his mother said too expensive. The exit door from Santa's room opened onto the toy department. He remembers being surprised by that. A guard stood on the toy department side to keep people from sneaking in.” So what? Has little to do with anything. One time in the same store though…

“One time in the Thirty-fourth street Macy's his mother told him to wait over here. What she did was buy a box of sanitary napkins. How's he know? Because she had a shopping bag with something shaped like a box in it when she came back and he thought it was a surprise for him, just by the way she said ‘Wait for me here and don't move from this spot no matter how long I'm away,' as if she didn't want him to see what she was buying for him, even if it wasn't around Christmastime or his birthday and she said she was going to another counter on the first floor and there was nothing for children on that floor that he knew of or could see in that store. She was away a long time. He had nothing to do. He wanted to move to another spot, at least a few feet away—the perfume smells from the counter she put him next to were bothering him—but didn't. A couple of times he thought maybe she forgot where she left him. It was the world's biggest store he'd been told a few times, so she could have made a mistake in directions herself or come back to where she thought she'd left him and decided he was lost. Should he try to find her? Or maybe just yell out ‘Mommy' till she came. She wouldn't like that if she heard it and one of the guards they seemed to have all around on this floor might just grab him and throw him out of the store. Or just try to get home by himself? How would he do it? He didn't have the fare for the subway or bus. He wouldn't know how to get to his subway station or bus stop even if he did have the fare. But he knew the name of his station and it was in this borough, so maybe if he told someone it and was able to borrow the fare, he'd get there. Once out of the station he thinks he could find his way home, since it was only three blocks away along the avenue you come up into and then just a short walk down the street. Better to stay put though. If his mother thought he was lost she'd get the whole store to find him or call up his dad to have it done. But how he found out what was inside the box was that night he looked in the bag. It was still in the foyer coat closet. He couldn't see any pictures or words on it that would make it seem like a present for him, so he asked his brother Alex what the box said. Alex looked at it, said ‘Kotex' and that he thinks it's something women use for their behinds or someplace but he doesn't know what for. ‘Cleaning, probably.'” Nothing there either.

“She was born on the lower East Side. Her father from her descriptions of him was a benevolent tyrant.” Weak, weak. “A dictatorial benevolist.” Forget it, besides wrong. “A disapproving wretch, egotist, let's face it: a mean bastard who spent more time trimming and waxing his Franz Josef mustache than with his kids.” She'd never. How does she describe him? “Everyone feared him.” “My mother sipped her drink, took a deep drag on her cigarette, said ‘Could you pour some more in it? I've been a good girl by nursing it for an hour, but now it's all melted ice.' Then ‘When my sisters and I saw him on the street we'd cross to the other side to avoid greeting him. Because whenever we did happen to meet him on the stairs coming up or turning a corner, he always criticized us. “Your hair's uncombed, your button's undone, retie your shoelaces and pull up your socks—you look like a slut.” He owned a liquor store-restaurant. Let's face it—a gin mill. The Polish girls who worked for us—they all had names like Sophie and Anna and Christina—also cooked for the bar's free-food counter. One time one of those big pots the food was cooking in…. One time a very big pot of stew, which when they were scoured and we were a little younger we also took baths in, fell off the stove on top of Aunt Rose. It scalded her whole body almost, till this day she won't eat any hot meat dish like that or really any liquid that's hot except tea. She had to be rushed to the hospital. What am I talking about?—the doctor came. I was the fastest one home at the time—I used to win all the athletic contests in grammar school, besides all the musical and intellectual ones too for girls—so I ran to get him.'” Weak, weak.

“His mother did very well in school. When she graduated high school she told her father she wanted to be a doctor. He said ‘One doctor in the family's enough.' Her eldest brother was an intern then. ‘Women worked as secretaries or assistants or nurses or stayed home.' She then wanted to be a lawyer. Her father said ‘One lawyer in the family's enough.' Her next eldest brother was in law school. ‘How many ambulances you think there are to chase? Besides, women don't become lawyers unless they don't want to have children and want to live only with women and smoke cigars and be like that.' Then an architect. ‘I don't want any architects in the family, not for my sons or my girls. For one thing, it's no profession for a Jew. It's all run by Gentiles and they'll keep you standing there for years before they give you even a tent to design. For another reason, because I won't let you try to do something stupid and useless like that where as a woman you'll have double no chance. Maybe you got the brains for it—that I can't say. But get a job that can carry you till you make a good marriage—that's all you need. You want to continue reading—to improve yourself or because you like books—do it while nursing your children or watching them in the playground.' She got an office job; evenings and on matinee days she danced in a big Broadway review. Some man she knew, and without telling her, had sent her photo to a beauty contest sponsored by a newspaper. ‘I think it was the whole city I represented,' she said about it recently, ‘or maybe just Manhattan. In fact, first I was Miss Rockaway, then from that I became Miss Brooklyn, though I'd never stepped in that borough except to go to its beaches sometimes, and then Miss New York, so it had to be for the whole city and maybe even for the state. It was so long ago. I can't look in the mirror most times when I think what a pretty face and shape I had then.' ‘You're still quite beautiful and you've kept your weight down,' he said. ‘For my age, perhaps, but that counts for next to nothing. Maybe less than that, for people look at me, when I've done my face and hair right and I don't have these rags on and what I'm wearing is basically black, and think “She must have been very beautiful once—a hundred years ago.” Anyway, I kept lots of photos but never clippings of those contests and shows, since I didn't want my dad finding them and learning about me. He thought all beauty contestants and show people were goats and tramps. In a way he was right, besides too much liquor and taking whatever drugs we had then and some of the men playing with boys. But I was nothing but a good girl right to the time I married your father.” Weak, weak.

“As a boy I loved looking at the albums and manila envelopes of photos from when my mother was a showgirl and beauty contest winner. None of the bathing beauty photos show her with a ribbon across her chest saying what Miss she was. ‘Because of my dad I only kept the ones that had nothing like that on them. Ones he might find, let him think I was girlishly posing for a boyfriend or a roving photographer on a boardwalk or beach.' ‘But it was in the papers, wasn't it?' I said. ‘Good point; I didn't think of that then. No, now I remember. It was in them but nowhere near as much then, and he only read the Yiddish and Polish dailies, which had nothing about it.' ‘Then his customers could have told him.' ‘That's true. If they did, he never said. My feeling is none ever said anything because they knew he'd get so mad they'd be banned from his bar for life.' She said she was Miss New York. Her sister Rose said it was Miss Coney Island. ‘I was her chaperon at it—Mama wouldn't let her go otherwise—so I remember.' ‘Then how'd she get to the Miss America contest?' I said. ‘She became Miss Brooklyn or something—Coney Island being in that borough—but that part I know less of. It was your Aunt Bitty who chaperoned her to that one, though she wasn't your aunt then because you weren't alive yet, and she died a few years after that.' My father said that whatever Miss my mother said she was is true. ‘She's got a memory like a machine that never stops. And all that was a little before I met her. Only thing my mother and I were interested in was that she came to me a whole woman. You think that's funny—go on, laugh, wise guy—but it should still be important to you, if you were smart. Of course, if she hadn't been what we thought she was, I wouldn't have tossed her back, though I might have asked her father for a larger dowry.' ‘You would have told him?' ‘Probably not, since he was already very generous. Gave me a gold watch, a big wedding—Cantor Rosenblatt sang, considered the best cantor in the world then—plus some cash to start the apartment with. I probably would have just lied to my mother and then done a lot of
davening
in
shul
because of it.' ‘Because of what—lying to your mother, or the other?' ‘What are you, a cop? Because of everything and nothing, you satisfied?'” Doesn't work. Concentrate.

“His mother was almost Miss America. First or second runner-up—she was never sure, she said, even when it happened. One photo he especially liked of her then had her in a one-piece bathing suit, barefoot, holding a ball over her head. A beauty. He should borrow it to show his daughters, or just pull it out of the breakfront drawer next time they're there. ‘This is Grandma can you believe it? When she was younger than your mother is now by almost twenty years, and thirty years younger than I.' Short black hair, big dark eyes, radiant smile—” Not radiant. Beaming smile, bouncy smile, just a big beautiful mesmerizing smile. Checks the thesaurus. “Short dark hair, big black eyes, bright smile, brainy face, bathing beauty figure—for then. She was curvy but slim, with small breasts. ‘I wouldn't win with those breasts today,' she said. ‘But they were good enough to nurse four normal-sized babies and each for more than a year. Doing it so long probably kept you kids from getting fat like your father in later age, if you have his genes for that.' Long perfect legs. Near perfect. Almost perfect. Athletic. ‘The woman who became Miss America—'”

“My mother was first runner-up in the Miss America pageant of 1922 or ‘23. Maybe even ‘24, since she later danced on the stage for two years till her father pulled her off it, got engaged to my father soon after, married in ‘27 and had my oldest brother at the end of that year. Or was he born in ‘28? He's eight or nine years older than I almost to the day. ‘The woman who won the contest,' she said, ‘was a Miss Sunshine. That was her last name. We all called her Sunny, though she was a real bitch. I don't remember her first name or what state she was from. Pennsylvania, I think. Ohio. She looked typically Polish and most of the Poles came from Pennsylvania and Ohio then. She was a striking bleached blonde with that little upturned nose the real Poles have—much more so than mine, and squinched. I would have won the title—everyone said so—if they had counted talent and intelligence as qualifications then. Sunny couldn't do anything but smile brightly and strut her behind, which were really no better than mine. While I danced, sang, knew something about manipulating marionettes, and played Bach and popular music on the violin. I also had graduated a good public high school with an academic diploma and very near the top of my class, and I don't think Sunny or very many of the other contestants ever got past primary school.' George White was one of the judges and all the runners-up were invited to dance in his Scandals that year. This famous woman mimic was a
shikker
. This famous male singer slept with boys. This one had twenty stray mutts in his dressing room and once a month one would be found dead in the alley outside. Several of the dancers ended up living off sugar daddies and one she especially got friendly with married a cattle baron in Argentina who beat her to death. ‘I avoided the stage-door Johnnies like the plague. Mr. White knew I was repulsed by them and gave me special permission to leave through the lobby.' She was one of the six women to introduce the Charleston and one of the twelve to introduce the black bottom, ‘or maybe it was the other way. I know that for one of those dances six girls were on one side of the stage and six on the other. Some of the outfits we had to wear barely covered our bosoms and pubic areas. But I made sure, with skillful pinning or these pink beads I glued on, that my nipples were never exposed, though they were awfully painful to take off.' She danced in two or three movies made in a studio in Long Island City.
The Song and Dance Man
one was called, ‘though it was also known as
The George White Scandal Movie
—maybe that was its title.' Helen Morgan and Don Petricola were in it, she thinks. ‘There still wasn't sound yet, but when I saw it I seem to remember songs sung and shoes tapping and brief applause. What I remember most is the work I put into it, after spending nine hours at the hospital every day, and the rotten pay.'”