“My father and my mother’s brother parked in the same lot near their offices. My father was a dentist, Uncle Leonard a doctor. This was in 1923 or ‘24. They got to know each other during their walks from the lot to their offices. They kept their cars in a private lot because they were often vandalized or stolen off the street in the neighborhood their offices were in. My father always had the matchmaker in him. Nothing gave him greater pleasure than bringing people together, he said, except making a bundle of money in one killing. ‘Through my practice I knew or knew of lots of single people, and because I felt I was a good judge of character, it was easy for me to hook them up. If it worked out and they happened to throw a new suit my way or a weekend in Lakewood for me because they were so happy, I didn’t refuse it.’ He introduced Uncle Leonard and Aunt Teddy. She was the daughter of a diamond dealer whose teeth he took care of and who’d told him he was looking for a professional man as a husband for his daughter and was prepared to give a huge cash dowry. ‘I knew he meant me. But when I saw her picture I knew she wasn’t my type, so I thought of Uncle Leonard, whose practice wasn’t doing too hot. He was a good G.P. but like the rest of your mother’s family, had no personality.’ My uncle was urging my mother to go out with my father who was attracted to her. She was a beauty contest winner, had been top of her class at Washington Irving, worked as a medical secretary days and danced in a Forty-second Street review nights and matinees, and wanted to be an architect or lawyer. Uncle Leonard brought my father over the house several times but she never took to him. ‘He was bald and fat and though he had a nice small nose he wasn’t that good looking, I told my brother. And he’ll only get balder and fatter and like everybody’s nose, it was sure to grow. I had an image of a slim elegant handsome man for a husband, with a head of hair. And because I wasn’t looking for one then and was considered quite pretty and intelligent and my father was reasonably well off, I didn’t say boo to him, though practically speaking I knew he was a good catch.’ My uncle continued to press her. ‘“Just for lunch once,” he said, “and if there’s no spark, I won’t nag you again.” There wasn’t for me. He was entertaining and personable enough but I felt he’d never be someone I’d be deeply interested in. His mother was everything to him, for one thing, so I knew his wife would always come up short. But he pushed and pushed. Phoned every day. Sent my mother and me expensive presents and flowers. Wined and dined me, few times I consented to go. And he made my dad laugh hysterically whenever he was around him, while no one else had ever got a rise out of him. And my brother, whom I worshiped—he used to say your father was a diamond in the rough who only needed a touch of polishing from me. But he kept insisting he was the most dependable good-natured well-heeled man any girl of my background and education and now “age,” since I was falling on twenty-two, could hope to find and that my dad would never let me go back to school. So, one thing led to another. I never did find him that attractive in all our years of marriage, except when we were dressing formal. He really put time and money on himself then, no handkerchiefs hanging out of his pants pockets, and the shiny black clothes hid his fatness and made him sort of more graceful. There was another beau though whom I was attracted to then. Henry Morton, who was as distinguished and proper as his name, which I think was something else shortly before I met him. Messer or Moscowitz. Maybe if he’d been a little more of a rough-and-tumble guy your father was I would have tried harder to land him. But he acted like a neuter and wanted to amass a fortune before be settled down, and he was only starting out then. He cried uncontrollably when I told him I was marrying your father, but made no counteroffer. If he had I think I would have run off with him, despite what it might have done to my family. He later had children, I understand, so it wasn’t as if he couldn’t do anything. After I’d had my first two and was very pregnant with you—no matter how hard I dieted you grew and grew and coming out nearly killed me—he came to Prospect Park right across where we lived to ask me to leave your father. As a joke I said “The kids?” and he said “We’ll have our own soon after you have that one.” I remember the afternoon clearly. It was bright, sunny and warm. The girl had her midweekly half day off, so it had to be Wednesday. Your brothers were in a sandbox. He popped out of nowhere, I was on a bench knitting, and said he was going to the zoo or just dawdling around taking in the meadows. Later he said he’d been coming out to spy on me for two weeks and had even peeked through the blinds to see me resting in bed. We lived on the first floor of an apartment house: Vera Court it was called, which is how I got the name for your sister. He said he hadn’t made his fortune yet but was getting there, and had never stopped loving me, and so on. Seeing how I saw myself as a big block of blubber then it was a nice feeling to be thought of so desirously, even if I didn’t like him asking me to give up my children for him. I wondered what he would have asked me to do with you once you were weaned. When I said I couldn’t go away with him, even if he agreed to taking along my two-and-a-half children, he cried like a faucet again and that was the last I saw of him, running screaming out of the park and across the avenue, with cars stopping and dodging all around him, or at least by the sounds of their tires and horns I thought they were. For a few days I read the obituary pages thinking he might have killed himself. Anyway, that night I told your father. He said the man must be crazy or was drunk but he’ll come out of it. Sometime after he pointed out a wedding announcement of Henry with a girl from high society. Her family—known anti-Semites—couldn’t have known he was Jewish. Even the last name of his deceased parents had been changed to his for the announcement. Your father wanted to send an anonymous note to the girl’s parents that Henry’s real first name was probably Chaim or Herschel—he didn’t like anyone but himself getting away with anything. In the end he spoke appreciatively of him as a swindler but not as a man who made it on his own as he had.’”
“My mother had a sweetheart when she got engaged to my father: Howard Morton. I was around forty when she told me this and I said ‘Howard, the same as mine? What was that all about?’ ‘Maybe it was Herbert, or Henry. No, it was Howard. I never thought of that before.’ ‘You mean you didn’t name me after him?’ ‘Of course not. Maybe deep down I remembered what a distinguished-sounding name it was. In fact, I can almost bet it helped get him where he got. For I’m sure without it or an equally distinguished first name, and a plain enough last one to go with it, he wouldn’t have passed as a Gentile and got into society and rich because of it. He ended up owning trains. I suppose I thought the same thing, in different ways, would happen to you. At the least that people would look up to you a bit more. Little did I know we were coming into an age where people got ridiculed for lofty first names or if they didn’t have one that could be shortened to a single syllable and that Jews with the most Jewish names and faces could get into Gentile society without passing.’”
“My mother liked to recall going to the silent movies as a kid. The tickets for anyone under ten were two for five cents. ‘I’d stand outside the theater holding up my two cents and say “I got two, anybody got three?” Then some girl or boy would say “I got three,” and we’d buy the double ticket and go in together.’” No, that was his father.
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