by Peter Orner
Highland Park! (Leo shouting in the backseat.) No yippies! Better schools! Grandparents! No black people! Safer! I hate it already…
Shhhhhhhhhh, precocious one, shhhhhhhhhh.
A high place where the prairie convulses into ravines and the scalloped bluffs rise above the lake. It is part of what is known collectively as Chicagoland, a mythical place, a kind of parasitic hinterland that exists solely in the mind of those who dream of the city from a distance. Just half an hour away, depending on traffic. How do you begin to remember a place you’ve never left? It’s not yet full winter, and memory is always November. The trees are stripped bare. Now you can see all the setback houses you hadn’t been able to see in summer.
Welcome home, Alexander. We’re making this sacrifice for you. A white colonial three doors down from the lake. 105 Riparian Lane. Two lawns—front and back—a flagpole, and matching wrought-iron benches on both sides of the front door.
SIR EDMUND
A half-open door, a triangle of light stretching across the kitchen floor. Miriam looks out the window at the new dog loose in the backyard. A Lhasa apso. Philip named him Sir Edmund Hillary. Nobody really got the joke, the dog especially. He’s digging holes again. He doesn’t bury anything. Sir Edmund has nothing to hide. He just digs holes. Upstairs, in the guest room, the new baby wails. Maybe all this quiet wasn’t such a hot idea. On the counter curdled bacon soaks through a yellowing paper towel.
Lake Michigan, Winter
4
THE EAST WINDOW
Childhood recollected is often hallucination.
—Mavis Gallant, “Rose”
THE LAKE
His father taught him to swim by tossing him off the fishing pier at Cary Avenue Beach. Cold drizzle. Sink or swim, kid. Popper was four. Lake Michigan in his mouth, his ears, up his nose. The lake calm that day and rain was falling slowly. So calm he could concentrate completely on the cold. It was like being dropped into an icy bowl of cloudy soup, and it felt oddly right, the rush, the flailing around for breath itself.
And his father on the pier shouting: “Pull, Alexander, pull the water. Fingers together, thumbs locked—and now pull!”
Lake Michigan is 307 miles long, 118 miles at its widest. A total area of 22,300 square miles. “What’s so great about the lake?” Philip would say, and Leo and Popper would shout, “No salt!” Ever since, Popper has imagined God with a huge salt shaker—his grandfather Seymour’s, the one in the shape of Uncle Sam—so enormous God needs to hold it with both hands as he scatters salt and ruins the world’s oceans. Yet God left the Great Lakes pure, because we in the Midwest are made of superior moral timber. The lake is always east. East is always the lake and so is Jerusalem. At ten, he will swim to the sandbar off Cary Avenue Beach and stand on top of blue itself, his blue, Lake Michigan! Sixth-largest lake in the world and young, very young. At 10,000 years, in geological terms, Lake Michigan is a punk. But that first time, bobbing upward, the sky upside down, his father vanished, Popper wasn’t thinking about salt or size or even of water, though water was all there was and ever would be—water and his own skin, the uproar in his ears, and the way the cold made him nothing.
AT THE AMBASSADOR EAST
Remember a John-John haircut in the basement of the Ambassador East Hotel downtown. The place was very red, and the walls were padded. Old black men with graying hair and steady hands would cut Popper’s hair gently, soothing him, All right now, all right now. Rubbing his neck sometimes with warm fingers. Didn’t matter. Still, he screamed bloody murder. Why? Because he was moppy-headed and he wanted to stay moppy-headed.
Also, his hat. In order to get a haircut he had to take off his hat, the hat, given to him by his favorite Uncle Mose.
The sight of Uncle Mose’s big blue honker coming through the door of Seymour and Bernice’s house at 38 Sylvester Place. Hail the family loser. There was just something about the man. He rarely said very much, but he liked to come out to the suburbs every once in a while and see the family, the only family he had. Also, he needed money.
Mose walked with a limp and had a droopy face that swung from side to side like a basset hound’s. His very blue nose was colossal, and his nostrils were like the hairy mouths of caves. He was Seymour’s much older bachelor brother. Bernice once said at least he should have married somebody. People ought to get married, Bernice said, if only for the sake of appearances.
It was said Mose was a sad man—but his sadness seemed to manifest itself in a bunching of his forehead that always made him seem perpetually surprised, as if everything about the world—opening a door, sneezing, being broke and asking for handouts from Seymour—was all cause for wonder.
For a living, he sold suits on the Southside, not very far from where he and Seymour grew up. This, according to the family, was an almost unspeakable tragedy, given the relative success of his brother. Because he’d never thrived, the family was forever trying to diagnose him. What’s wrong with Mose? Oh, the man simply isn’t a striver. Once, he gave Popper an old hat of his, a sunken brown fedora with a missing band, and Popper lived under that protection for years.
Leo?
Yeah?
Were you asleep?
It’s four in the morning.
What happened to Uncle Mose?
What?
Uncle Mose. He gave me my hat, remember? What happened to him?
He must have died at some point, no?
Wouldn’t we have heard?
Call Dad and ask him.
Mose? No, he died in… hmmm. When did he… I always liked him. Didn’t amount to much, but I for one always—
But wouldn’t we know it if a man, a member of the family—
Alex, the man sold raincoats on South State Street. I have enough trouble with family that’s living. I never see you, you never call. When you do, you talk about nonsense. Ask my mother.
My God, Mose is long dead! But you know something, dear, it’s very strange. Seymour’s brother. I honestly don’t remember if he died or not.
And Leo upstairs in the lobby in Queen Elizabeth’s chair (the one she graced when she visited Chicago), chatting up the concierge. We used to live right near here at 1444 North State Parkway, but my brother had to be born, I guess, and so we moved. Not that my parents don’t regret it. Every day they regret—
The basement of the Ambassador East Hotel. How red the barbershop was, those puffy walls he always wanted to bang his face into. Plunked hatless in the chair, shoulders waggling, feet scissoring.
All right now, all right now, hold steady—
His father: Stop that fidgeting.
His mother: Come on, Phil, at least let him hold his hat.
UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS
The leather chair upstairs in the TV room. Her father’s old chair. After Walt Kaplan died, Miriam had it shipped to Chicago from Fall River. Philip decreed it too ugly for the living room, so it was lugged upstairs to the TV room. After dinner the boys would race to it, that ancient veiny leather chair. The loser had to sit on the green couch. Leo would change the channel to Upstairs, Downstairs and turn up the volume. Not because he liked the show, or maybe he did, but mostly to drive his brother bananas. Or maybe, no. Maybe Leo had a strategy. Why not drown out the kitchen voices with some uproarious British comedy? Popper didn’t know, at the time didn’t care. All he knew was that he hated that show and he’d throw Paddington Bear at the screen, Babar, that toucan, what was the name of the toucan? A butler chases a skirty maid around and around a table with a candlestick, her tithering as if she doesn’t like it, but she likes it. Popper knows she likes it. And the butler growls under his breath like a mad terrier.
THE EAST WINDOW
Or the grandfather clock downstairs, how Philip would never forget to wind it. He’d pull the chains and set the hands with his finger, and it would start again, the relentlessness of that tocking (no ticking, only tocking), and for years it lulled him until, at no time he can pinpoint, it stopped being a comfort. This is all he kno
ws. That one night it soothed him and the next night and forever after—it didn’t. His room. With the built-in white cabinets and the blue horseshoe wallpaper. Popper would lie there and listen to that tocking all night long, trying to hold the moment of the silent pause between beats.
Now he’s certain he never slept an inch in all those years in that house, although of course he must have. He must have. It stands to reason. In order to wake up you have to sleep, but he doesn’t remember ever opening his eyes in that room, because they were always already open, staring out at the dark east window, waiting for the first light to come slantwise from out beyond the lake.
THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE
Seymour claimed the stockyards as his birthright, his bloody inheritance. He’d tell the boys how he clawed his way from the slaughterhouse to the suburbs. The stench, he’d say. Once that death gets in your nostrils, it’s up your nose for good. I take a snort of a flower and I still smell guts. My first job out of high school was to yank out the cow intestines with my bare hands and toss them out the window into Bubbly Creek. They called it Bubbly Creek because guts are hot. The next guy down the line would rip off the legs, the next guy the head, and so on. I tell you, boys, the killing is nothing compared to the tearing apart.
Seymour, behind his slab of desk like a tomb. Beside him the globe that seemed to be the exact circumference of his head. Remembering or inventing, what’s the difference? He wanted his grandsons to understand the patent ugliness of this world. He worried they might become as soft as their father. His heroes were Don Rickles and Barry Goldwater, in that order. He said a man had to be bold. He said that the meek might well inherit the earth. They can have it. For the time being, grab your Cadillac.
“Jews didn’t work in the slaughterhouses,” Philip says. “I’m not saying we always had it so easy but we never packed meat: the Irish did that. Maybe some Italians.”
They are walking back to Riparian Lane from Bernice and Seymour’s house, about a mile away. The snow wanders down the sky and lands on his brother’s hat, melts. His father’s hat and melts.
“After high school, my father went straight to college in Champaign. And after college, he went to work for his old man selling insurance on Garfield Boulevard. When my grandfather Leopold died, he took over the business, expanded it, relocated downtown, pretty much wrecked it—but the man never once killed a single—”
“Seymour was in the Pacific theater,” Leo says.
Popper slapping slush but listening. Who knew the little mute was listening?
“Theater is right,” Philip says. “By the time he got in it, the war was practically over. He missed it. Why do you think it’s so important to him? The man was thirty-nine years old when he signed up. He begged to go. Anything to get out of the house.”
“What about Okinawa?” Leo says.
They walk over the bridge over the ravine. Popper sticks his head between the slats in the guardrail. The tall trees rise from his country of dead leaves.
“He watched Okinawa from his boat like he was at the movies. Grab your brother before he falls in the ravine.”
“Bubbly Creek,” Popper says.
Leo yanks Popper back from the guardrail, bonks him on the head for good measure.
Philip stops to shake the snow off his hat.
“I remember the day he came home. He walked into our house in his full-dress blues. Esther and I ran up and started pulling on his legs. Daddy! We were faking it. We didn’t know who the hell he was. Don’t hit your brother.”
Seymour told them many other things. He often sang of the beauties of insurance. It’s the dream protection business. Isn’t life insurance a glorious thing? Can you imagine a more brilliant business plan? Deodorant follows the same concept. Creating need where none existed before is the great illusion of capitalism. And insurance is the crown jewel, a thousand times better than even deodorant, because it’s all in your head, and what won’t the people pay for a little calmness in their heads? They think if they pay up each month they won’t die.
He also had faith in the GOP and Quaker Oats. Every time he saw the Goodyear blimp on television Seymour’s heart surged. You know what’s also a very good product? Lubriderm. Hell of a stalwart product, a man’s got to moisturize, too. Don’t forget that, boys.
JAKE ARVEY IN THE LOBBY OF THE STANDARD CLUB
“Who was I? A nobody! Nobody knew Jacob M. Arvey. Yet I was elected alderman… I came to the attention of the people.”
—Jake Arvey in Milton Rakove’s We Don’t Want Nobody Nobody Sent
Chicago, 1972
Jake! Philip says. But something in Arvey’s face says, Not so loud, kid. Not so loud. And so Philip leans toward the old man and says, low, gruff, comradely, “Haven’t seen you around much, Jake.”
Jake Arvey, the ancient political warhorse, stands, one foot forward, one back, a boxing stance, on that lobby carpet that has, since the thirties, been the same dark maroon of coagulated blood. Teddy, the hat check man, watches, his mouth sealed shut.
Arvey says, “Talk a sec, Phil? In Teddy’s office?”
“Sure, Jake.” Philip follows Arvey through the little half-door of the hat check. Arvey nods to Teddy, who doesn’t nod back with his head exactly, more with his eyes, so it only seems he’s nodding. And that’s Teddy, graceful, beloved by the men who daily entrust him with their coats, their hats, their secrets. Wives in the front door, girlfriends in the back door.
“My castle’s your castle, Colonel Arvey,” Teddy says.
Arvey laughs, and parts the coats. A sliver of a room, and yet isn’t a coatroom like a tiny forest you can disappear into? Philip breathes up the animal smell of wet wool. Outside, it’s sleeting. Arvey, an old friend of Seymour’s from the war. It was Arvey who got Philip started with the city in the early sixties.
Phil, your father tells me you’ve hung out your own shingle.
It was simple, Colonel. I made myself a senior partner in half an hour.
Type of law?
Anything I can get my hands on, sir.
Listen, call the mayor’s Mary Mullen at the Central Committee. Tell her you’re Sy Popper’s kid, that your old man sold insurance on Garfield Boulevard. Maybe get yourself a little city business. What was the address?
Which address?
On Garfield! Seymour’s office. The mayor will want to know where you come from. How can he do anything for you if he doesn’t know where you come from?
322 East Garfield.
Tell Mary that. Tell her 322 East Garfield. The Third Ward. And that I sent you. She’ll get you an audience with his honor. Mary Mullen has opened more doors than Paul and Silas. And don’t forget to send a contribution to the Party.
Of course, Colonel, of course…
In the coat check, Arvey squeezes his shoulder.
“The jig is up, kid.”
“Which jig?”
“All of it. Every last nickel of it.”
“You need money, Jake? Just say the—”
“Mortality, Philly. You’d think I would have thought about it by now, but I tell you, I woke up the other day and it occurred to me for the first time. Isn’t that incredible? I’m going to Miami Beach to croak. I booked a room at the Doral. They asked me if I wanted a view. I said, What do I need a view for?”
He stares at the old man. Arvey’s bony jowls the cartoonists used to make such hay out of. Philip digs his hands into his pockets and tinkles a little change. And then he thinks he gets it. Ah, all of it, all of it. Politics isn’t what it used to be. The havoc of the ’68 convention, riots, Vietnam, a lot of nonsense. The machine’s decaying, petrifying. The mayor is still standing. The mayor will never be a man who needs to be propped. But for how long? And when he dies, they may as well bury his chair along with him. May as well dig a hole big enough for the whole fifth floor of City Hall while they’re at it. And nationally? George McGovern? God save us. No, the jig is up up up.
Philip sees it, the state of their world. He grins. “You�
��ll outlive us all, Jake,” he says. “You’re a horse.”
Arvey sighs. He takes off his hat, and there’s that shiny head in all its glory. Was it not Jake Arvey who whispered to Truman, Come on, Harry, give the Jews a little country, haven’t they been through enough? But influence in the world is one thing, influence in this city something else entirely. For decades Arvey was ward boss of the mighty Twenty-fourth, the Democratest Democratic ward in the country. It’s true he could even have been mayor, but when his time came—back in the forties—Henry Horner was in Springfield, and a Jew governor and a Jew mayor would have been too much for the Irish. Not that anybody in this city has ever given a damn who’s governor. It was the principle of the thing. Two Jews would have been bad for the machine, bad for the party.
Arvey puts his hat back on, then spies another he likes better. He trades his for it, a newer fedora of a slightly darker shade of brown.
“Fits, huh, Phil?”
“Not bad, Jake.”
Philip stares at the rows of hats. Hats, Philip thinks, hats. In this city we men still wear hats.
“The sun will do you good,” Philip says.
“Think so? I’ll miss the weather here. It strengthens the character.”
“Listen, Jake, I’m thinking about running for something. Chuckie Dalver’s seat in the legislature—”
“There’ll be time for that, Phil. You’re not ready. Meantime, keep getting rich. How are your boys?”
“The older one’s quite the artist.”
“And pretty Miriam?”
“A bit bored in exile.”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Arvey says. “You want to talk about dying. Who does that girl have to talk to out there, the grasshoppers, the dandelions? And Seymour? How’s the old lion?”