I Can Get It for You Wholesale (12 page)

“Good things you learn quick,” she said, laughing.

“Not good things, Ma,” I said. “Smart things.”

“Is the same,” she said.

“Maybe,” I said.

“So all right,” she said. “So we won’t throw it out. So we’ll save it for to-morrow.”

We went into the kitchen arm in arm, laughing. I sat down at the kitchen table, and she began to mix the batter.

I rolled up my shirtsleeves and stretched my legs far under the table and watched her. It felt good to be looking at her. I realized suddenly that this was the first rest, the first real rest, I’d had in weeks. It was always that way when she was around. It was like putting your arm on a log after a tough swim. That’s why I didn’t like to see the gray hair. It scared me a little to think that some day there wouldn’t be a place to reach out and touch and draw a deep breath and rest a while.

“Here, Ma,” I said, taking the bowl of batter from her. “Let me mix that. You mash the potatoes and fry the onions.”

After a few moments she looked up from the gas range and said, “What are you looking at, Heshie?”

“Nothing, Ma,” I said. “I was just thinking, why don’t you—why don’t you go to the beauty parlor once in a while, like the other women?”

Take it from me, it’s no cinch telling your own mother she isn’t perfect.

She stopped pounding the potatoes to stare at me.

“What are you all of a sudden, Heshie, a little crazy?”

“What do you mean, crazy?” I said. “All the other women do it.”

“If all the other women are going to run up on the roof and jump off, so I’ll have to do it, too?”

“That’s not the idea, Ma,” I said. “It’s just that you’re still a young woman. Why shouldn’t you—?”

“Aah, Heshie, please! Don’t talk like a baby,” she said, bending over the pot in her lap. But I could see her blush a little and I knew she was pleased. “What are they going to do in the beauty parlor, make a young chicken of sixteen out of me again?”

“No,” I said, “but they could make you look as young as you really are, and not older.”

“Yeah,” she said, trying to sound sarcastic and taste the mixture of mashed potatoes and fried onions at the same time, “they’re going to make me look young!”

“Of course they will, Ma,” I said. “They touch up your hair a little and they manicure your nails and they fix up your eyebrows—”

She set the pot of potatoes down suddenly and shook with laughter.

“What’s so funny about that?” I asked.

“You,” she said. She held up her clean, worn hands, with the dishwater scars all over them. “In the first place, the girl in the beauty parlor, she’ll take one look at these hands, she’ll get the cholera. And secondly, other boys, they come your age, they go into business, they make a little money—they start looking around for a nice quiet girl she should make a good wife. But you, instead you should look around for a wife, you start sending your mother to beauty parlors.”

“So what’s wrong with that?”

“It’s not wrong,” she said. “It’s just crazy, that’s all.”

“All right,” I said, “so it’s crazy. But don’t forget, there, I like some cheese blintzes, too, not only potato ones.”

“Aah, you always eat with your eyes, Heshie,” she said. “This is enough.”

“Never mind,” I said, grinning at her. “By me it’s not blintzes unless I get both kinds.”

She went to the icebox and took out the cheese.

“I’d just like to see if your wife, when you get one, if she’ll cook for you two kinds of blintzes also.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll find that out in advance. No blintzes, no wife.”

She looked at me slyly.

“Maybe you got already a girl, you’re keeping it a secret?” she said.

I looked at her as though I had been highly insulted.

“Ma!” I said. “Would I keep a secret from you?”

“So all right, then,” she said. “If you haven’t got a girl, I’ll get you one. I got one that’s for you just right.”

Maybe it wouldn’t have so many curves. But it’d be kosher all right. Leave it to Mama.

“Don’t do me any favors, Ma,” I said. “Just watch out for those blintzes, there.”

Unless my nose had suddenly lost its sensitivity, my guess was that the old lady had been giving this matrimonial business a little more than just a passing thought. If I knew what was good for me, I’d get her mind onto other things, quick.

“Did you ever hear of such a thing?” she said, addressing the frying pan as she poured the batter in. “Instead of thinking about a wife, he’s worrying about stuffing his stomach.”

“That’s the way it should be,” I said. “Wives are easy to get. But blintzes like these—aah, Ma, that’s not so easy to find. You ought to see some of the junk they give you in restaurants.”

She picked the hot thin pancake out of the frying pan with a fork, put it on a plate, and rolled it full of mashed potatoes. She worked swiftly and silently at this, the most important part of the process. But I knew she was thinking deeply, because when she set the first plate of hot blintzes before me, she said:

“Maybe you’re right, Heshie,” she said. “Maybe you got time with a wife. Maybe you got other plans, hah?”

If my biographer ever wanted to find out from which side of the family I got my brains, I guess he wouldn’t have much difficulty.

“Sure I got other plans,” I said. “I always have other plans, Ma.”

“Maybe now you’ve got a little more money, now you don’t work so hard, Heshie, maybe now,” she said hopefully, “you’ll go to school at night like Papa wanted you should, and you’ll become a lawyer?”

My dear Mrs. Bogen, unless you drop your recently acquired critical tone, and pay more strict attention to business, I’m afraid we’ll have to drop you from the payroll.

“Aah, Ma, please,” I said gently. “Let’s not start that all over again.”

“Why not, Heshie?” she said, sitting down across the table from me. “You know it’s what Papa always wanted you should be. And now, now you got a business, you’re making money, you’re still young, you could go at night easy. Plenty boys they study at night and they become big lawyers. What’s the matter? They’re smarter than you? You’re just as smart as they are.” Smarter yet! “If by Mrs. Heimowitz that dumb Murray of hers,
he
could become a lawyer by studying at night, then you could do it in a one, two, three, Heshie. You know that.”

“Sure I know it, Ma,” I said. “But what’s the sense of me wasting my time? You know what lawyers are making today? You know how many of them are starving? Why, for crying out loud, Ma, I make more in one week in that delivery business of mine, than most lawyers they make in a
year
.”

“That’s nothing, Heshie,” she said. “For a good one, there’s always room.”

“You must’ve been listening to Mrs. Heimowitz again,” I said, reaching for more blintzes. “That’s what they all say. For a good one there’s room. They’re crazy. For a good one there’s
never
enough room. Well, I’m good, Ma, and there’s plenty of room all right, but not in the law business. Not for me. I got bigger plans than that.”

“All right, Heshie,” she said, “so you
don’t
make so much money at the start. But look at the respect. Look how nice it is for Mrs. Heimowitz she should walk down the street and everybody should say that’s the lawyer’s mother. Don’t you want people should look after
your
mother and say that?”

“No,” I said. “I want people should look after my mother in the street because she’s wearing diamond rings and fur coats and they should say there goes Mrs. Bogen, she’s got a good son.”

“But Papa, when he was alive, he always wanted—”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I know what Papa wanted. But that’s just what was the trouble with Papa. That’s why we lived on the East Side and in the Bronx all our lives on twenty bucks a week. Because Papa couldn’t be bothered figuring out what was the best and quickest way to make money. He had to waste his time figuring out what was the highest-class fancy—”

“Heshie!” she said sharply. “Is that a way to talk?”

“I know, Ma,” I said. “I’m sorry. It’s just that every time we get started talking about it, we end up the same way. Now, look. If I’d’ve listened to you and to what Papa said I’d still be working as a shipping clerk for fifteen dollars a week and tearing my eyes out going to school at night. Like this, I’m still young, I got my own business, we got plenty of money, we can begin to live right, we can buy what we want, we can—”

“All right, Heshie,” she said with a sigh. “All right.”

I got up and came around the table toward her.

“So come on, Ma,” I said, kissing her. “Let’s stop fighting and arguing and let’s go out for a walk and to buy a couple of things. All right?”

“All right,” she said.

I helped her with the dishes and then she got dressed and we went out.

We walked down the street together, stopping every once in a while to talk to the neighbors sitting in chairs on the sidewalk. What I liked about her was the way she could make even a simple thing like that seem important and dignified, not kikish and washwomanish like the rest of them.

As we came near the 179th Street corner she nudged me and spoke in my ear.

“There’s that Mrs. Heimowitz,” she said. “That’s the one that her Murray is a lawyer.”

“She looks it,” I said. “You’d think a lawyer’d be ashamed to have his mother wear a worn-out pair of shoes like that. What’s the matter, can’t he afford to get her a new pair?”

“Ssshhh,” Mother said, and then, “hello, Mrs. Heimowitz.”

“Hello, Mrs. Bogen,” she said. “Your son is home early, isn’t he?”

I smiled and nodded and Mother said, “Yes.”

“The lawyer isn’t home yet,” Mrs. Heimowitz said with a sigh. “He works so hard, and such important work, yet too, he doesn’t get home till I don’t know when.”

“Tsk, tsk,” Mother said. “My Heshie, he took a half a day off from his business he should come home to take his mother out shopping a little.”

“Nice going, Mom,” I said out of the corner of my mouth as we moved on.

“She always shows off that lawyer son of hers in front of me,” she said bitterly.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, patting her arm. “I’ll get you a couple of things to-night that’ll give you a chance to show off to her until she’ll get blue in the face.”

We turned into Tremont Avenue and walked until we reached a dress shop.

“This is our first stop,” I said, as we went in.

I didn’t even give her a chance to look over the first selection that the salesgirl trotted out. I took one look at the price tags and sent them back.

“Haven’t you got anything more expensive than this?” I said.

“Why, yes, sir. I didn’t know—”

“Bring out the best you’ve got,” I said.

“Heshie!” Mother whispered to me sharply. “That’s no way to buy! They’ll think you’re a dope and charge you anything they want.”

“Don’t worry about it, Ma,” I said. “You just pick out what you want. I’ll handle the rest.”

For a while she couldn’t seem to make up her mind. There were six on the rack. Three of them were simple and quiet and expensive-looking. The others were flashy and cheap and just the kind of stuff I hate. But this was her party and I wasn’t butting in. She could have whatever she wanted.

“I don’t know which one to take,” she said finally.

“What do you mean, ‘which
one
’!” I said. “You go ahead and pick yourself two or three.”

“What’s the matter with you, Heshie?” she said, laughing. “Are you crazy to-day?”

“I’m not crazy,” I said, “and you’re not taking only one dress. You’re taking at least two. Understand?”

She stood there, hesitating.

“What’s the matter, Ma?” I asked.

“I can’t make up my mind,” she said. “I like these.” She pointed to the three simple, quiet ones. “But—”

“But what?”

“But since you gave me that long speech about the beauty parlor,” she said, “I’m just thinking, maybe I ought to get these—” she pointed to the flashy ones—“maybe they’ll make me look a little—a little younger.”

I laughed out loud and gave her a big hug, right in the middle of the store. All of a sudden I felt a new way about my mother. All of a sudden I felt proud of her.

“Gee whiz, Ma,” I said, “you’re a corker, all right. Go ahead and take the ones you like,” I said, “and don’t take all that beauty parlor talk too seriously. I was only kidding anyway.”

“All right, then,” she said to the salesgirl. “I’ll take this one.”

She pointed to one of the nice-looking dresses.

“What’s that?” I said sharply.

“I said I’ll take this one,” she said.

“That’s what I
thought
I heard,” I said. “What did I say about this one dress business, hah?”

“Oh, Heshie,” she said, “Don’t act like a baby. One dress is enough for—”

“Never mind,” I said, and turned to the salesgirl. “Are all these dresses my mother’s size?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right,” I said, “then wrap them all up.”

“All three, sir?”

“All three.”

“But Heshie—!”

“But Mama!” I said, imitating her voice. I felt so good about her having had the taste to pick something dignified, and not something that would make her look like a loud Bronx blouse, that I was willing to buy out the shop for her. “How are you going to make Mrs. Heimowitz eat her heart out if you haven’t got enough dresses to wear a new one every day?”

“All right, Heshie,” she agreed, shaking her finger at me. “But remember, that’s all.”

“That’s all nothing,” I said. “The Bronx is full of shoe stores and hat shops and underwear shops, isn’t it?”

She slapped my shoulder playfully.

“I don’t want you should waste your money like that, Heshie,” she said.

“Who says it’s wasting it?” I said, hugging her. “I don’t know why, but to me it’s a pleasure, Ma.”

T
AKE ME, FOR INSTANCE.
I can read the handwriting on the wall long before it’s even written.

The trick is simply to recognize that it’s writing. Sometimes it doesn’t look like it. Sometimes it looks like Miss Marmelstein.

“And what did you say your last name was?” I said, letting my eyes take their time as they crossed the Alps.