"We're sorry," she said. "We're very very sorry." That was good, Barry thought. Now he looked at his father, who merely touched Dora's hand with his own and moved his head in a gesture that was somewhere in between a nod and a shake. Barry's mother nudged him on ahead.
Mashe and Eleanor were surrounded by a whole group. The Goldens would have to wait. Barry wondered why his mother hadn't been sitting in this room, since she was, after all, Aunt Eleanor's sister. Maybe it was because they weren't so close. In fact, before Barry's father lost his job and the Goldens started selling Eldor, his mother and Aunt Eleanor talked to each other very little. Occasionally Barry had overheard conversations about "they think they're too good for us" from his father, and his mother would always make excuses and blame it on Mashe.
The crowd ahead of them was moving forward. Barry rehearsed in his mind. "We're sorry. We're very sorry." But before he could say a word Aunt Eleanor grabbed him.
"Barry," she said, "Oh, my God, Barelah," and she began to wail and sob. Barry looked at his mother, whose mouth was set stoically but whose eyes were filled with tears. He was stunned. He didn't even know Aunt Eleanor that well. This must all be because he was a boy and Eugene was a boy and Aunt Eleanor thought of Eugene when she looked at Barry. Or something. But she wouldn't let him go. And worse yet, she was moving him toward Mashe, who was also sobbing. And Mashe grabbed him now and they both held him and hugged him, and other relatives were coming in and "tsking" and nodding their heads knowingly, and Barry thought maybe he should say something, but all he could do was stand there watching them cry all over him.
Some very soft music started to play, and the rabbi, whom Barry recognized as the same one from Eugene's bar mitzvah, came into the little room. Thank God. Mashe and Eleanor let go of Barry and stood. Someone helped Dora to her feet and she followed the rabbi back toward the main room, where the family would sit in the front row. Eleanor walked behind Dora and then Mashe. Barry looked at his mother. She nodded and gave him a shove. He was next. In line. In importance. To Mashe. At Eugene's funeral. Barry was surprised to see that everyone else was already seated. As they filed into the front row he caught a glimpse of the pretty cousin. She smiled gently at him. Please, God, not now. He turned and sat down. They had closed the casket.
Barry felt very small sitting there with Mashe on one side and his mother on the other. Mashe had stopped crying now. But while he listened to the rabbi speaking, he did take out a handkerchief and blow his nose loudly for what seemed like five minutes. Barry didn't hear much of what the rabbi said. Not just because Mashe was blowing his nose—but because he was deep in thought. Especially after Mashe put the used handkerchief away—and took his big manicured right hand and placed it over Barry's little one. Why? What does this mean all of a sudden? Barry thought. Barry remembered a fairy tale he'd read once about a rich king whose wife was barren—that was the word the fairy-tale book used—so the king went into the town and gave gold to a very poor family of peasants and they gave him their baby daughter. Maybe Uncle Mashe was going to try and buy him from his parents now that Eugene was dead. Barry couldn't remember whether the baby daughter had grown up happy to be the daughter of the king or not. But he did remember how spectacular Eugene's bar mitzvah had been. Maybe after Mashe bought him there would be a bar mitzvah like that for him, too.
It was over, and everyone was going to the cemetery. Barry's mother was not. She was going back to Mashe and Eleanor's. Barry went with her in a taxi. The apartment was at Ninety-second and Park Avenue. Eleven rooms. Not counting bathrooms. A colored maid answered the door looking sad, and Barry's mother hugged her. Barry had never seen his mother hug a colored person before. Especially not Eva Jones, who came to clean their apartment once in a while. Barry figured this colored maid must be someone important. Barry's mother didn't really need him to do much. He was free to wander around. He had been to the apartment before, but of course this time he looked at it differently. After all. Who knew what could happen now? The door to Eugene's room was closed. Did he dare? His mother and the maid were in the kitchen removing waxed paper from trays of corned beef. They'd never notice.
He opened the door slowly. If he went in and closed the door behind him, they probably wouldn't even look for him.
It was better than he remembered. The football pennants and sports equipment and a giant desk with a real typewriter, and bookshelves with two sets of encyclopedias, and a fur rug on the floor, and a double bed with a huge comforter monogrammed with a giant "E." That would have to go. Barry closed his eyes. My God. In his mind he was already moved in. He sat down at the desk chair to think.
How could he be planning this? To become the replacement child of Uncle Mashe and Aunt Eleanor. What about his mother, who loved him so much she called him her little jewel? And what about his nice father, who—who what? He was trying very hard to think of something special about his father when he heard the voices. Oh, no. The people. The people were there. Already. Probably back from the cemetery. Maybe some didn't go to the cemetery. It sounded like there were a lot of them. They would be out there eating the corned beef and they would see him coming out of Eugene's room. And they would know his plans. He walked to the door and opened it. No one was looking. Slowly he walked out of Eugene's room, closed the door behind him and went into the dining room to make himself a corned-beef sandwich.
For the first few months after Eugene died, everything went back to being the way it had been before, and Barry was beginning to feel really foolish about the idea he'd had that Mashe and Eleanor were going to buy him. Eleanor and Barry's mother were talking on the phone to one another more often now than before Eugene died, so Barry would get to hear bits of information. Like the fact that Eleanor and Mashe had given all of Eugene's clothes away to some charity, and that Eugene's two sets of encyclopedias, both bar mitzvah presents, had been donated to the Sunday-school library at the temple, where they were putting his name on a plaque in his memory. Barry could tell that Aunt Eleanor was crying during these conversations even though he could only hear his mother's side, because his mother would say into the phone: "Please, Elly. Don't, honey girl. Please."
Barry always felt a rush of love for his mother when he saw how sweet she was to her sister on the phone, and how much she cared for a woman who didn't seem to start being nice to her until she needed her.
Then one night it began. Almost the way Barry had imagined it might. Just when he had stopped thinking about it.
Barry was in his room doing his homework. He hated his goddamned homework, and he hated junior high school, and worse yet he was going to Hebrew school and being tutored by the rabbi. And the rabbi had bad breath, and there was almost nothing about Barry's life that was exciting or different or important, and Mashe called.
Barry's father answered the phone and Barry knew already that it wasn't just one of his mother's friends or one of the yentas asking when she could come over to try on dresses, because his father put on this voice that Barry recognized as his talking-to-someone-important voice.
"Why, isn't that a lovely thought!" Barry heard his father say into the phone. Not once in his life had he ever heard his father speak the word "lovely."
"Oh, Barelah," his father called out to him in a phony singsong, which really seemed silly, since Barry was standing next to him at the time. "Your Uncle Mashe would like to talk to you on the telephone," went the rest of the song.
Barry took the phone nervously. He hadn't seen Mashe since the day of the funeral. What could this be? The buying? Was it actually going to happen?
"Barelah?" Mashe said.
"Hello, Uncle Mashe," Barry said, thinking that his own voice sounded very babyish. He was talking to Mashe on the phone. He felt important.
"You know, your Aunt Eleanor and I belong to an organization that has theater parties on Broadway. Do you know what that means, Barry?"
"No." He sort of knew. Why hadn't he said yes?
"It means we buy theater tickets in a group,"
Mashe said patiently. "So . . . since we ordered several months ago, we had three."
Silence. The implication was clear. The ticket had been ordered for Eugene. More silence. Who was supposed to say something now?
"You want to maybe go with us to Gypsy?"
Gypsy. Barry had seen the signs in the subway station. On the buses. Everywhere. Best damned musical I've seen in years. Mashe, Eleanor. Eugene's ticket. Meningitis. The E on the comforter would have to go.
"Uh, yeah, Uncle Mashe," Barry said, looking around and realizing his father had been standing right there next to him the whole time smiling. It was the smile that went along with the phony singsong voice.
"Next Thursday," Mashe said and hung up.
Mashe and Eleanor's seats for Gypsy were fantastic. They were in the third row on the right-hand side, directly opposite the drummer. Barry got the chills when he heard Ethel Merman's voice say "Sing out, Louise" from the back of the theater. The whole audience turned to see her make her entrance down the aisle, and they all burst into applause. It was exciting. The most exciting thing Barry had ever seen. Mashe and Eleanor were excited, too. They laughed at the cow and Mr. Goldstone, and when the sister, June, went away with Tulsa, the tap dancer, Barry sneaked a look at Eleanor and she had her face screwed up as if she might cry.
During intermission in the lobby Mashe bought Barry an orange drink and a giant Hershey bar. Then Eleanor introduced him as her favorite nephew to a lot of her lady friends in mink coats, who in turn introduced him to their various daughters and sons, and there were so many of them that afterward Barry couldn't remember any of their names. He did wonder if some of them hadn't maybe read the same fairy tale he had, and figured out the truth, which was that he was really only the child of the poor people. But no one said anything. And two weeks later, when Mashe and Eleanor picked him up and took him along on Eugene's preordered ticket to see West Side Story, all the same kids were there, and some of them greeted him by name.
On the night they took him to see Gypsy, Aunt Eleanor had a headache so they took Barry back to Brooklyn and went straight home. But after West Side Story, it was Sardi's. For supper. The three of them. And Mashe asked Barry what he thought of the show, and Aunt Eleanor asked Barry to tell her what his sizes were, and she wrote them down. And even though it was Tuesday night, a school night, Barry didn't get home to Brooklyn until midnight, and when he got into bed he couldn't sleep because he was thinking about the theater and being rich. And knowing he wanted somehow to have a part of each of those things. And wondering if Mashe and Eleanor would ever ask him to live in the room with the pennants, because it seemed like a better place to start what Barry was all of a sudden certain would be some kind of fabulous future, that far outshined the drabness of his Brooklyn life.
Barry's bar mitzvah was nice. It couldn't even be compared to Eugene's, but Aunt Eleanor helped his mother decorate the social hall at the shul with crepe paper, and even though no one said anything to him about it, the catering for the reception was so elaborate and the band was such a good one that Barry was sure that Mashe had probably contributed a few dollars to help pay for it.
Barry's whole class from junior high school was invited and his whole class from Sunday school, too, and many of them came to shul that morning to hear him read his haftara, which Mashe told him he did magnificently, which his mother told him made her "kvell," which his father said was "Very good, Barelah," and which made Aunt Eleanor cry.
The party went on until 1 A.M. and afterward when everyone left, Barry and his mother and father and Mashe and Eleanor drove back to the Goldens' apartment in Uncle Mashe's Cadillac. Barry was surprised when his mother asked Mashe and Eleanor to stop in for a late-night cup of tea and they said yes. He knew that even though his mother and Eleanor could yak for hours, Mashe was bored to tears by Barry's father. Barry was exhausted, and while the four of them sat at the kitchen table laughing and talking about the other relatives, Barry went to put on his pajamas. When he came in to say good night, Uncle Mashe put an arm around him.
"Nu, bar mitzvah bocher," he said. "Maybe you didn't notice, but your uncle Mashe didn't give you your present yet."
Barry had noticed. He had already totaled and retotaled the cash, checks and bonds he'd received from the other relatives combined, and they added up to a thousand dollars. He knew Mashe would give him some large amount, even if it was just so Barry's parents could tell the other relatives what a generous man Mashe was, and not because he was eyeing Barry as potential son material. Barry's mind raced. How much would it be? Two hundred? Five hundred?
"Instead of money," Mashe said—Barry's heart sank—"which anybody can give," Mashe went on. That cheap bastard. "Your Aunt Eleanor and I thought maybe you would like to go on a little trip with us. So, as your bar mitzvah present, we want to take you to Hawaii."
Barry's mother gasped. "Oh, my goodness!" she said. "How lucky for you, Barelah!"
Shit! Barry thought.
"In December," Aunt Eleanor said.
It was September and still warm in New York, but Barry knew in December when the cold weather came, his aunt and uncle always went off to vacation in a warm climate. Yes. Now he remembered the way Eugene used to always be suntanned around Christmas vacation. First Barry got Eugene's theater tickets, now he was going to get his suntan.
"So, what do you say?"
Barry smiled. "Oh, thank you, Uncle Mashe," he answered. He wondered if Mashe could tell that behind the smile he was worried about whether or not suntans caused meningitis.
Barry's parents came to the airport to see Mashe, Eleanor and Barry off. It was Barry's first flight and they kept telling him, "Don't be nervous. There's no reason to be nervous." He wasn't nervous at all. He was exhilarated. When he discovered that every single person getting on the plane knew Uncle Mashe because the flight was a charter of several companies in the garment industry for a "shmatah" (Mashe's word) convention, Barry was surprised.
So were his parents. He heard his father say softly to his mother, "Big deal, a convention." But Barry liked the idea. There were lots of other kids of all ages going along. He kissed his parents goodbye and looked back at them briefly before he walked outside to board. They looked jealous.
It was a wonderful feeling to get on a plane in New York where it was nine degrees the day they left, arrive that night in Los Angeles where it was seventy-eight degrees, and be in Hawaii the next morning where it was eighty-four degrees. And so beautiful.
The Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu was pink. As far as Barry knew there weren't any pink buildings in New York and it was the first time he'd ever seen one.
Mashe and Eleanor had what was called a one-bedroom suite, and there was a cot in the living room for Barry. The living room faced the Pacific Ocean, and the beach was better than anything Barry ever imagined. If he stood outside on the little balcony he could look to his left and see the huge crater called Diamond Head. Mashe pointed it out to him. Mashe had been in Honolulu before, so he was able to tell Barry a lot of things about it on the plane ride over. The most important thing he told him had to do with the beach.
"Use a lot of lotion."
Mashe and Eleanor put their lotion on in the room. That precluded the risk of sandy hands, they told Barry, so he put lotion on, too. By the time they got outside, a lot of the other people from the charter already had their blankets spread on the sand. Some of the older couples waved at Mashe.
Barry noticed on one blanket very near the water were three boys not far from his age. He remembered seeing them on the plane. Separately. With their parents. He was amazed that they had all become friendly so fast. Those things usually took him a while. Maybe they'd known each other before. Must have. The boys had a portable radio which was playing pretty loud. Eleanor saw Barry looking at them.
"Why don't you go over there, Barry?" she said. "Those boys look nice." It sounded like something his mother would say.
Why didn't grown-ups understand that you didn't just go
over to a group of people expecting them to immediately make you a part of their group? That wasn't how it was at all. People who walked up to other people like that were jerks. The guys had to decide to include you and then ask you. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe Aunt Eleanor was telling him to go over because Eugene would have gone over with no trouble at all.
The three boys had been sitting, but now they all got up and ran into the water. All three of them swam out a distance and stopped. They were far enough out in the water so it looked as though it would be very deep—but they were standing, and the water was only as high as their chests. They were laughing and roughhousing.
Eleanor was spreading the blanket. Barry looked at Mashe, who was taking off the flower-printed shirt that matched his bathing suit. Mashe was very white and pale and paunchy and had no hair on his chest at all. Barry looked back at the boys.
"Swim out there, Barelah," Mashe said. "The boys are on a sandbar."
"I can't swim."
"No! You're joking. Your mother never sent you to the Y?"
Barry shook his head. He felt very badly. Maybe he should go back to the room. He couldn't swim. Even if those guys did want to include him, they would laugh at him when it was time to go in the water and he had to admit he couldn't. Maybe they would say he was a queer, which is what one of the guys in his gym class called him last week when the volleyball hit Barry's hand so hard that it bent back and hurt his wrist and he dropped out of the game.
The Boys in the Mail Room: A Novel Page 5