Once more, a spiffy Canadian contingent had been overlooked.
But the definitive pronouncement on Suez was not made until 1967, when Paul Johnson, then the editor of the New Statesman, wrote:
For many people of my generation, Suez was the most exciting time of our lives – the equivalent of the Spanish Civil War for our elders. The issues seemed absolutely clear-cut: right on one side, wrong on the other. We lobbied MPs, stuck up posters, broke up cocktail parties with our angry arguments. It was my first experience of public speaking – standing on a rickety chair outside factory gates and haranguing a sea of sullen faces. On Suez Sunday we all thronged to a monster rally in Trafalgar Square, where Nye Bevan made one of the most sparkling speeches of his life. Then the cry: “To Downing Street” – and the huge, uncontrollable surge into Whitehall. From being comfortably ensconced in the middle of the mob, I suddenly found myself mysteriously in the front rank, with mounted police advancing purposefully towards us. I remember thinking: “I’m glad they’re not French cops.” Then a few minutes of complete confusion, in which I lost my umbrella and a button from my coat. Some of us reassembled at the Ritz for tea, where a kind waiter took my coat away to have a button sewn on.
Such, such were the terrifying barricades of the London fifties.
2
“YOU MARRIED A VERY CLASSY TOOTSIE, MY BOY. I’LL bet with her background, she goes to the toilet she doesn’t even look in the bowl.”
“Oh, thanks, Maw. Thanks a lot.”
“And I want to thank you,” his mother said, “for inviting us to your wedding. I never realized you were that ashamed of us.”
“There was nobody from her family there either,” he said, and for the umpteenth time he explained that they had married the day after Pauline’s divorce had come through. “Maw, she was eight months pregnant with Alex. We couldn’t wait.”
“Like father,” she said, “like son.”
“But I wasn’t born,” he protested, “until two years after your marriage.”
“You saw the certificate?”
“No.”
“Pour me another drink, yingele mein.”
He did, but he was infuriated; he was also sorely disappointed, because he had been looking forward to his return to Montreal after so long an absence abroad. 1963 it was and, apart from a couple of flying visits home, he had been away for twelve years. He was returning with a pregnant wife, a child, a growing reputation as a journalist, and an unfinished book. He had, since he had first started on The Volunteers, interviewed survivors of the International Brigades in England and France, and now he felt that, making Montreal his base, he would be able to seek out the many American and Canadian veterans he had corresponded with. Fortunately, money was not an immediate problem. He had already signed to write a monthly column on sports for a Toronto magazine. His New York connections were good. A documentary series he had written on the history of boxing for BBC-TV had been sold in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand; a shortened version was scheduled to appear on CBS. All this had earned him a chunk of money sufficient to put down a deposit on a modest house on a terraced street in Lower Westmount. He had been looking forward to his return home because the move had been sweetened for him by the incredible news about his parents. Imagine, after all these years, Reuben and Esther reconciled. Actually living together again. His mother had, she was to tell Joshua, made the reconciliation possible by sacrificing her career as an exotic dancer. For his father’s sake.
“For my sake? Shit. She’s got fifty-five years and maybe three hundred fifty thousand miles on her.”
“So what? Sally Rand’s still stripping and she’s a lot older than I am. And Margie Hart’s still out there. ‘If I Shake, It’s for Mother’s Sake.’ Did you hear the one about Lois DeFee?”
Six-foot-six Lois DeFee, the “Eiffel Eyeful,” had married a midget.
Q. How did the midget make love to Lois?
A. Somebody put him up to it.
His mother, who had yet to discover that her future would be in skin flicks, had already turned the first of her many emotional flipflops. She had discovered God, the messenger coming in the mousy shape of a little rebbe from the Chabad Lubavitch. Together they had scoured her kitchen stove, thrown out all the dishes, and replaced them with kosher ones. A mezuzah was hammered into the front door. “By rights,” Esther informed his stunned father, “I should have my head shaven and wear a wig.”
“How come?”
“So I shouldn’t be sexy for other men.”
“And you think if you walk around here looking like a peeled hard-boiled egg, I’m going to find you sexy?”
His father was still toiling for Colucci, organizing construction workers, sort of. A week before Joshua and his family were to sail home, Reuben phoned to warn him about Esther. “She’s, like, very Jewish these days.”
Their first visitor on Wood Avenue was Jane Trimble, and even before his father made it to the house, Uncle Oscar phoned.
“Hey, Dimwit, Denny Dimwit, you’re back?”
“Yes.”
“So what?”
“How are you, Uncle Oscar?”
“Jiffy-sunglasses, what do you think?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Prick, what’s to understand? It’s sunny out, blinding, see, so you dip into your pocket for your tube of Jiffy and just spray it on your regular eyeglasses. Instant sunglasses.”
“Hey, that sounds terrific.”
“There’s a problem.”
“What?”
“The formula, prick. What do I put in the spray?”
Reuben arrived early the following morning with a case of chilled Labatt’s, a dozen red roses, a battery-powered fire engine, and a doll that squeaked when spanked. He immediately charmed Alex, but he was shy with Pauline. Stealing approving glances at her when her back was turned, giving Joshua the thumbs-up sign, but shy with her until she said, “I’m so sorry, Mr. Shapiro –”
“Reuben.”
“– there’s not even a chair for you to sit on yet.”
“Aw, don’t worry, kid. The furniture’s going to be here in an hour.”
“What furniture?”
“Well, yeah, right. The furniture. Didn’t you tell her, Josh?”
“You tell her, Daddy.”
“You like antiques. Joshua said so. Well, they’re on the way”
“Is that right, Josh?”
Joshua nodded and abruptly turned his back to jimmy open another packing case. Reuben began to stack dishes.
“Now hold it, everybody. Stop. I don’t mean to appear ungrateful, but did it ever occur to either of you that I might want to select the furnishings for my house?”
“Why, sure. That’s how come I got it on approval. Isn’t that so, Josh?”
“Damn right.”
“Anything you don’t want, it goes right back and fuck it. Excuse me.”
“And where will this furniture be coming from?”
“Yeah, where,” Reuben said, scratching his head. “Why, from the antique shop.”
“Which one?”
“Ask Josh.”
“Huchette’s.”
“You said it. It’s in St. Jerome. You turn left at the Esso station.”
“I never heard of it,” Pauline said, anticipating a shipment of garish furnishings she wouldn’t be able to return without hurting her father-in-law’s feelings. Damn it, Josh.
“Well, this Huchette runs this kinda warehouse for my old friend Colucci, and I had the pick of everything.”
An enormous moving van pulled up in front of the house, and the men began to unload. A long oak refectory table. Eight high-backed chairs. A beautiful grandfather clock. Winged leather armchairs. A quilted sofa. A brass bedstead. Bureaus. An antique mirror. Pauline stood there speechless, amazed, and then she suddenly cried, “Stop!”
The men set down the heavy oak breakfront, panting.
“I thought this was the kinda stuff she liked,” Reuben sa
id, shooting Joshua a dark look.
“Of course I like it. It’s beautiful. But have you any idea what these things cost today?”
Reuben rocked on his heels, beaming. “It’s, like, my wedding gift.”
“But we can’t accept all this from you, Reuben. It’s far too much.”
Reuben broke open a bottle of Labatt’s.
“Why don’t we just let the men put everything down,” Joshua said, “and we’ll discuss it after they’ve gone.”
Pauline wavered.
“O.K., boys,” Reuben said. “Bring in the rest.”
A rolltop desk. A marble-topped table with a wrought-iron base. Beds. A color-TV set. Lamps. Another sofa. And still the men were returning to the van for more. Pauline, distressed, summoned Joshua into the kitchen. “He’s not a rich man. We can’t take all these things from him. It’s indecent.”
“Yeah, but he’s very touchy. We don’t want to hurt his feelings.”
Finally, the movers left and Joshua and Reuben watched anxiously as an awed and obviously perplexed Pauline moved among her new possessions, peering into a drawer here, running her hand along a surface there, standing back the better to ponder a wing-chair. And then she stooped behind the color-TV set, lingering there, before she shot bolt upright, her expression severe. “Now sit down, please,” she said.
Reuben sat down.
“Both of you.”
Joshua took the other wing-chair.
“Have all these things been stolen from somewhere?” she asked in a quivering voice.
Joshua sighed and contemplated the ceiling.
“How could you think such a thing?” Reuben asked.
“Because,” she said, “if you will look closely at the back of the color-TV set, you cannot fail to observe that somebody has gone to a good deal of trouble to file off the serial number.”
“Holy shit,” Reuben said, “but those dealers are just not to be trusted. One’s more crooked than the next.” He examined the set himself. “Fortunately, this doesn’t come from Huchette. I picked it up on Craig Street and it’s going right back there.”
“Why don’t we just call the cops?” Joshua asked.
“Well, yeah, right. Good thinking. We could report it. What do you say, Pauline?”
She hesitated. Somewhat – if far from totally – reassured, she backed off a little. “You do whatever you think best. I’d better make some lunch for Alex.”
The following night Reuben and Esther took them out to dinner in a kosher restaurant. Pauline had already warmed to Reuben and felt easy with him, but Esther scared her. A born-again, dark, brooding Esther.
“In which faith,” Esther wanted to know, “will my grandchildren be raised?”
“Cut the crap,” Reuben said.
Nervous, and more than somewhat high, Pauline told Reuben what a gentleman his son had become. She said he never entered her boudoir without folding his trousers neat and washing up good, even if he no longer kept his wallet under his pillow. She also allowed that he had yet to hit her.
“He never should of told you any of that,” Reuben said, his manner solemn yet pleased.
But Esther, Joshua could see, was fulminating, obviously feeling left out.
And now, two nights later, seated with her in his parents’ N.D.G. apartment, Reuben out at Blue Bonnets, she said, “Pour me another drink, yingele mein,” and he fixed her a Dewar’s and a splash.
“Poor Ruby,” she said.
“I didn’t say that.”
“But right now you feel sorry for him, you feel he never would have had to marry me if not for you.”
Once, Joshua had summoned up the courage to ask his father why he had married Esther in the first place.
“You think it was my idea? She was a boxing freak. She used to come to my fights shrieking, shouting curses at the referee, sobbing any time I was hit. Hanging around outside the dressing room. A Leventhal girl. I don’t know how many times she proposed before I said yes, on condition she promised to stay away from my fights. I looked like a fool.”
“Didn’t you ever love her?” Joshua demanded angrily.
“I forget.”
“That’s a hell of a thing to say.”
“Those Leventhals gave me a lot of trouble. They treated me like dirt.”
Joshua fetched another glass and poured himself a drink. “I know why you hate me,” Esther said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Ed Ryan. Remember?”
“I remember.”
“You came back from Belmont Park that day and you knew, just seeing me standing there, and you gave me that look, his look, and then he came back from Michigan, the second time I mean, and it didn’t matter how many whores he had while he was hiding out, or what I went through worrying about him, he found out, maybe that gangster Colucci told him, and Ed Ryan ended up a cripple and me a drunk, my son.”
“I didn’t know anything about his whores, not then, but I do remember that you used to lock me out of the house so that you and Ryan wouldn’t be disturbed.”
“Let me tell you something about your precious father. He’s incapable of a relationship with any woman who expects more than five-and-two from him, and don’t tell me you don’t know what that means. You used to go to Kitty’s too. Like father, like son.”
“I would come home from school and your bedroom would stink of Ed Ryan’s cigar smoke.”
“My, my. Mr. Ryan used to bring me flowers. Your father gave me a dose.”
“Oh God, Maw, there are some things I don’t need to know.”
“Do you know how long Mr. Ryan was after me, and all the others, with your father in prison if he wasn’t in hiding?”
“I don’t give a damn.”
“You don’t give a damn about me. All right. I deserve it. I never wanted you,” she said, reaching for the bottle. “Remember, I used to have to shoot a roll of film of you every week. His precious boy. You know why? He was afraid of what I might do to you. When you were a baby with the croup, I couldn’t get any sleep, I was going crazy, I once hit you so hard he had to send for the doctor. I hated changing your shitty diapers. If you hadn’t been born, I would have been with him in Michigan and we might have started a new life there. There was still hope for us then.”
“But I thought you only married him because I was coming.”
“I was beautiful enough to be in the movies. They wanted me to do a test.”
“Who?”
“Who? Where? Why? When? I don’t have to answer questions for the cops any more. People, that’s who. You adore him, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And if I told you that he killed at least one man I know of, what would you think of that, Mr. Writer?”
“In the ring?” Joshua put in nervously.
“He was fast. Oh, on his good days there were none faster. Stick, stick, and away you go. But he didn’t knock out too many people.” She paused. “No. Not in the ring. He took out a man on a back road on our side of the Vermont border. When he was running booze for the Gurskys. A gun fight.”
“I see.”
“Tell me,” she asked, smiling, “does the senator’s daughter know what kind of family she’s married into?”
“I suppose pot.”
Esther laughed. So did Joshua.
“Neither did I. Him. That crazy Oscar. Your Uncle Harvey begged me not to throw everything away for your father. He wanted to send me to McGill. But I was highly sexed and Reuben was like nobody I had ever known before, and he told me he was going to be a champion and I believed him and look at him now. An ex-con in a Panama hat. A hoodlum’s bum-boy. Did you know he used to break people’s hands for Colucci?”
“Yes, I knew.”
“Tell the senator’s daughter.”
“What have you got against Pauline?”
“Her age. And the way you follow her everywhere with your eyes. I’m leaving your beloved father as soon as I can find work. Getting together again wa
s a mistake.”
“But I thought it was your idea?”
“Think again. Anyway, it isn’t working. I want more than five-and-two out of this lousy life.”
“What will you do?”
“I have plans.”
“Can I do anything to help?”
“I don’t need your money. I have family of my own.”
Joshua winced.
“That hurt. Good. You’ve hurt me plenty. Hey,” she asked, relenting, “what happened when the Alabama Assassin met the Brockton Blockbuster?”
“Rocky Marciano dumped him in the eighth round.”
His mother began to sob. “And who did Floyd Patterson beat for the crown?”
“Archie Moore. Fifth round. Chicago. November thirtieth, fifty-six.”
“Maybe I’ll just find myself a younger man,” she said, pouring herself another drink, “who can fuck me like Mr. Ryan once did.”
“God damn it, Maw.”
“Don’t you ever cry?”
“No.”
“I’m not that old, you know. I can still handle it. She’d understand, your classy-assy tootsie. Because she’s been around, my son. If you don’t know, I do.”
“Pauline and I will be just fine.”
“This is the six o’clock news. Brought to you by ungrateful children, highly recommended by doctors everywhere. Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea. Hear this. Joshua Shapiro married above himself.”
“Like father,” he said, taunting her, “like son.”
“I was one of the Leventhal girls.”
“Wowee,” he said. But she didn’t react. She didn’t remember.
“You never cared for them, any of them, but when you were in trouble with the cops, who always came through for you? Your beloved father or Uncle Harvey?”
“Daddy once told me that they treated him like dirt.”
“O.K. So? We were much more cultivated people. I could play the piano. We wore white gloves on the High Holidays, the Leventhal girls. I didn’t jump out of my pants at the sight of a policeman. My father used to take me to lectures. John Mason Brown. Pierre van Paassen. We attended symphony concerts. You know, I once asked your father if he would take me to Macbeth, Donald Wolfit was in town, at His Majesty’s, and do you know what he said? ‘Shakespeare,’ he said. ‘Take away the fancy costumes and the swordplay and what are you left with? Poetry, for Christ’s sake!’ ”
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