The Dream (12 page)

‘I’m sorry,’ Sam said quietly. He was a gentle man with a big heart, and a great love for his wife and children. He was rather short, with a dark complexion and sad eyes. I never knew him to shout or lose his temper with anyone. He didn’t take offence when my father cursed him out. But he did finally buy a car, and he used to pick us up at the terminal and drive us to his house, and then he’d drive us back. The only thing my father had to grumble about now was that he hadn’t bought a bigger car so that we didn’t have to pack into it so tightly. Sam didn’t say anything then, but he did exchange his car for a bigger one, and it was in that one he came into the city to drive us to my Aunt Lily’s wedding.

Chapter Eleven

PHIL’S PARENTS HAD
finally agreed to attend the wedding, and with that and with my grandfather safely out of the way there was no longer any need to put off the marriage that Phil wanted so badly. Aunt Lily had wanted it to be a very formal affair, with a full ceremony in a big synagogue and then a fancy reception and wedding feast in a fashionable hall, not only to please herself but to impress Phil’s wealthy parents.

But when my grandmother heard what it would cost she asked, ‘Who do you expect to pay for all this?’

‘We have to,’ Lily said. ‘It’s the bride’s family that pays for the wedding when a daughter marries.’

‘Is it?’ my grandmother said. ‘Well, then you’d better get yourself a gun.’

‘What are you talking about, Mama?’ Lily asked.

‘Because you’d have to put a gun to my head to get me to spend that kind of money. But even then I wouldn’t do it. Ten thousand dollars! Who d’you think I am, the Princess of Wales?’

‘Mama, do you want us to look like a bunch of schnorrers in front of Phil’s parents?’

It was then that my grandmother slapped her face, because Lily had trodden on dangerous ground. The word schnorrer meant beggar.

Aunt Lily cried, but gave up, and the wedding was planned for my grandmother’s apartment. It was good enough, my grandmother said. All the other girls, Ada and Sophie and Dora, had been married in her house and what was good enough for them was good enough for her, and if Phil’s parents didn’t like it they could go kiss her arse.

So it was settled and the invitations were sent out. We received one, and it set my father to grumbling and cursing because it meant that we’d have to buy a present. But there was more than that. I would need a suit to attend the wedding. All I had was my pair of long trousers and a sweater that I wore to school. A suit, such as both my brothers had, was as important as a present in order to attend a wedding.

My father gritted his teeth and threw malevolent looks at me as he raged, ‘What the bloody ’ell does he need a suit for? Where’s he going, to the king’s ball? Who the bloody ’ell will notice the difference what he wears? And why should I have to spend my money on him? He doesn’t bring a penny into this house. All he does is waste his time in a school when he should be working and earning money like everybody else.’

He carried on like that for quite some time. My mother said very little. But I know what was going through her mind. These were no longer the days when she waited trembling on a Saturday afternoon for him to dole out to her what he decided was enough from his pay. She no longer had to depend on him. There were my two
brothers
and sister contributing money to the house. In the end he may have realised that himself and he stomped off cursing but defeated.

There was only one place to buy clothes and that was Maxwell Street where there were bargains galore, two rows of pushcarts lining either side where pedlars hawked all kinds of goods, edible and non-edible, and garments of all kinds for men and women. And there were stores where suits of clothes hung outside dusty windows in lieu of signs to indicate this was a place where clothing could be bought cheap. Outside some of them were ‘pushers-in’, men who tried to inveigle you into their particular store, urging, grabbing your arm as you went by, almost forcing you to come in and try on a suit – cheap, cheap, cheap – a next-to-nothing price you couldn’t beat anywhere. They were sometimes difficult to get away from. You had to pull your arm free and keep walking.

My mother seemed to know where to go. She had been here before with Saul and Joe to buy suits for them. There was one place where she could depend on getting clothes at the cheapest possible price. There was no pusher-in at this store that we finally came to. But before we went in, we halted and my mother said in a low voice, ‘If you see something you like particularly don’t let the man know. Try to seem as if you aren’t sure about it.’

There was a technique for buying clothes on Maxwell Street and my mother was well versed in it. She’d had a lot of experience before, buying our clothes in the market in England, and there was not much difference. My mother knew immediately the moment we entered the store that we had come at the right time. It was
empty
save for the man who was standing behind the counter with a gloomy look on his unshaven face. It lit up at sight of my mother. He remembered her from the last time she was here. The gloom vanished. ‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘How are you? How good to see you again. How are your two boys? I see you’ve brought another one. So you have three boys. Well, well, well.’ All this in one effusive greeting that pleased my mother considerably.

‘I have four boys,’ she said.

‘Four! So where is the other one? Why didn’t you bring him too? You know I have the best suits for boys here at the cheapest prices.’

‘He’s too young to need a suit. You’ll have to wait a few more years.’

‘So I’ll wait. I’ve got plenty of time. Right now I’ll bet you want a suit for this one. You’re in luck. I just got in a new shipment of boys’ suits at bargain prices.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of buying,’ my mother said. ‘I’m just looking in case I should need one for him some time in the future.’

I was alarmed. I thought she really meant it. I did not know that she was playing a game according to the rules. The man knew. He did not seem disturbed. He shrugged. ‘Go right ahead and look,’ he said. ‘That’s what my store is for, so people can look. Who said anything about buying?’

He then started to pace up and down behind the counter with his hands clasped behind his back, ignoring us as if we were not there. My mother began to look. There were clothes hanging on racks and she went through them, with me at her side. I thought they were all good. I’d have taken any of them. But she apparently
had
her own ideas. She took one after another off the rack, brought it out to the light, examined it closely, tugged here and there at the cloth, looked at the linings, put it back on the rack and took off another, going through the same process, sometimes having me try on a jacket.

It must have taken about an hour before she came to the brown one and whispered to me, ‘Do you like this one?’

I’d have said yes to any of them, but this one I really did like and I said, ‘Yes.’

She put a hand to her lips and looked over at the proprietor. He had his back to us and was looking through the window. I had spoken rather loudly and I didn’t say ‘yis’ any more. I said ‘yes’ the American way and very clearly. He must have heard me. But it didn’t really matter. The game was being played out. It was now up to my mother to put it back on the rack and start leaving.

The proprietor turned away from the window. ‘So you couldn’t find anything you liked?’ he asked.

‘Not this time,’ my mother answered. ‘Perhaps next time I’ll see something for him that I like …’ That seemed final and she was ready to go, and I followed her, still puzzled and disappointed. I had liked that brown suit. It was double-breasted and very much like the one Joe had bought and that I had admired when I saw him wearing it.

But then my mother, seemingly on the way out, halted and said casually, ‘By the way, how much is that brown double-breasted suit?’

‘Which one?’

She went back to the rack and took it off and showed it to him.

He examined it carefully and finally said, ‘For you, seeing that you’re an old customer, sixteen dollars.’

‘Come, Harry,’ my mother said to me, ‘let’s go.’

‘How much do you want to pay?’ the man asked quickly.

‘I told you,’ my mother said, ‘I’m not buying. I’m just looking. There’s another store down the street I want to look at.’

‘How much would you want to pay for the brown suit if you were buying?’

‘Seven dollars,’ my mother said.

‘Goodbye,’ the man said, turning back to go behind the counter again and look out through the window.

We actually went out. My disappointment was keen. The less chance there seemed of my getting the brown suit, the more I wanted it. I walked beside my mother and was about to voice my disappointment when I felt a hand on my shoulder from behind. I had not heard the footsteps. Perhaps my mother had. She did not seem surprised when she saw it was the man from the clothing store halting us.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll let you have it for fifteen dollars.’

‘I’ll give you eight,’ my mother said.

Out there on the sidewalk, a few feet away from the store, it was settled. Nine dollars and fifty cents. I went home elated with a brown double-breasted suit in a cardboard box under my arm. I couldn’t wait to put it on. I’d have to wait. The wedding was still a month off, towards the end of May. Phil had wanted it earlier, as
soon
as possible, but sometimes my grandfather came home for Passover, which took place in April, and they were taking no chances that he might come in time for the wedding, so Lily had persuaded Phil to wait another month after Passover, just to make sure the old man was not coming. She was still in deadly fear of Phil and his parents finding out about him.

And so I too had to curb my impatience and wait to put on my new suit.

It was much too large for me. The sleeves of the jacket came below my wrists and the shoulders hung loosely. The trousers were too wide round the waist and too long. The cuffs hung down on to my shoes and the bottoms folded like an accordion. I had tried the suit on in the store and all this must have been perceptible to my mother. But it had not bothered her. She preferred it that way, figuring with her usual prudence that eventually I would grow into it and I would not have to buy another suit for several years.

In the meantime, she made several alterations and made it look fairly presentable on me, and the wedding day came at last when I could put it on. Surveying myself in the long mirror that hung at the back of the bathroom door, I was well pleased with what I saw. My mother, too. They were all gathered around, watching, even my sister Rose, who usually remained aloof from family affairs.

However, there was a contemptuous sneer on her thin, pointed face as she looked, and then without a word she turned and walked away. Joe was more voluble. He was downright angry at my mother for having chosen a suit that looked exactly like his, brown and double-breasted
and
with a vest. Except that mine might have been a comic version of his. He was smart-looking in his brown double-breasted suit, smart and handsome, everything fitting his slim body well, whereas mine hung baggily like …

‘He looks like a scarecrow all dressed up to frighten the birds away,’ my brother Saul said and laughed.

Joe agreed. He was furious. ‘Couldn’t you have picked another colour at least?’ he said to my mother.

‘It was such a good bargain I couldn’t let it go,’ she said. ‘But don’t worry. They won’t mistake him for you.’

Then she was sorry she had said that, for next moment Saul quipped, ‘Not with his face.’

He might have said the same thing about himself. We resembled one another with our hooked noses and the glasses both of us wore. Joe was the handsome one of the three of us, with a straight nose and dark eyes with long lashes.

At any other time I might have felt incensed over Saul’s remark, and I might have given him a punch in the ribs and said something about the way he looked – like a rabbi. He had chosen a black suit, black because that was what orthodox Jews wore and a rabbi especially. His prayer shawl fringes stuck out of the waist as prominently as ever, and lately he had taken to wearing a yarmulke that was perched on top of his head like a bird’s nest.

But I was in no mood for fighting. Looking into the long mirror that hung on the back of the bathroom door, I was quite pleased with the way I looked. I thought I looked quite spiffy, a regular swank. To go with the suit, I wore a striped shirt that Uncle Saul had once worn, and
one
of his ties also, a bright yellowish colour. The trousers were still too long in spite of all my mother’s cutting and sewing, and the bottoms still folded like an accordion on to my shoes, but as far as I was concerned I had never looked better and I was looking forward to the wedding.

Well, so they were all in a good mood and looking forward to the big celebration, for that was all it could be with the passionate love Phil had shown Aunt Lily all these months. Even my father seemed to be in a rare good mood and he, certainly, had a lot to look forward to. There would be plenty of booze. Aside from the bottles Abe was bringing from his bootlegger’s cache, others in the family had announced they were bringing bottles.

And my mother had been up almost the entire night baking cakes for the occasion. We were loaded with these and the wedding present, a milk jug that my mother thought the newly married couple should have, when Sam drew up in front of our house with the big, second-hand Maxwell for which he had traded in his much smaller Ford. We hurried down the steps with our packages when we heard the horn blow.

There it was at the kerb, a bright yellow colour, with Sophie and the two girls perched on the high back seat. It was a convertible and the top was down. The weather was warm and sunny. We piled in, scrambling for the best seats, trying to avoid a lap, squeezing in tightly. My father, gazing and seeing the sky, said, ‘What the bloody ’ell kind of car is this? Where’s the other ’alf?’

It was explained to him that this was a convertible, with a top that folded. Sam offered to put up the top if it would make him feel more comfortable. My father chose
to
ignore this and said, ‘So long as you were getting a new car, couldn’t you afford to buy a whole one instead of an ’alf?’