Morningside Heights

by Joshua Henkin

  They stopped at a Jewish deli on Essex Street. When Arlo’s father was growing up, the Lower East Side had been lined with delis, but now most of them were gone, and the ones that remained were kosher-style, not kosher.

  “What’s kosher-style?”

  “It’s ersatz kosher,” Arlo’s father said, but that didn’t clarify anything.

  His father, pointing at the tubes of salami that hung like billy clubs from hooks and the dishes of smoked meat behind the glass, said, “It’s not kosher, but it’s still corned beef.”

  “What’s corned beef?”

  “And you call yourself a Jew?”

  Arlo didn’t call himself a Jew, not really. He was simply himself: he was Arlo. But one time he’d heard the phrase wandering Jew, and he thought if wandering was what made someone Jewish, then he was a Jew a thousand times over.

  “In that case,” his father said, “welcome to New York.”

  And there Arlo had been, thinking Jewish food was the dumplings at the Szechuan place on 74th Street. “Pork blessed by a rabbi,” Sarah had called it, but Arlo was at such a far cultural remove, there were layers upon layers he didn’t understand.

  He ordered a corned beef on rye and his father ordered a pastrami.

  “You’re eating that sandwich in two bites,” his father said.

  “I’m the world’s fastest eater,” Arlo said, unsure whether to be embarrassed or proud.

  They entered a building, the lobby of which was so bright it could have been the headquarters of a sleep experiment. Above the bank of elevators hung the words schoenfeld rehabilitation center. “Rehabilitation,” his father snorted. “That’s a euphemism if I ever heard one.”

  “Where are we?” Arlo said. “Is this a nursing home?”

  “You said you wanted to meet Enid.”

  When they emerged from the elevator Arlo’s father whispered, “Get ready for FBI clearance.” They were asked to show ID, then put through a metal detector and ushered down the hall, where their names were looked up on a list. “Here she comes,” his father said.

  Arlo was too stunned to speak. Enid looked old enough to be his grandmother. Her arms were like tubes of flesh—they reminded him of those salamis at the deli—but her cheeks were hollowed out. Then he remembered: the car crash. She was just feet away from him, and he smelled her, salty as herring. She just looked at him and looked at him.

  “Baby,” Enid said. Forty-five years later, she still called Arlo’s father that.

  “I’ve brought someone to meet you,” Arlo’s father said. “Enid, this is my son, Arlo.”

  Enid seemed confused.

  “Not from Pru,” his father said. “From Linda, my first wife. This is Arlo,” he repeated. “I’ve told you about him.”

  Arlo wondered whether this was true.

  His sister was afraid of nursing homes, but Arlo wasn’t afraid. He was overcome, instead, by a quiet awe. This is my aunt, he thought. Except for his father, mother, and sister, he’d never met a blood relative in his life.

  Enid was clutching a small implement. “That’s Enid’s transistor radio,” the attendant said, and Arlo thought of his own transistor radio, which he’d listened to with his mother in Maine, the Red Sox announcer doing the play-by-play.

  But it was music, not sports, Enid listened to. A Yiddish broadcast came on, and a calm settled over Enid, and she started to sing. She had a lovely voice, which startled Arlo. Then he felt embarrassed for being startled, for thinking that if you were mentally impaired you couldn’t sing.

  “Sing with me, baby brother,” Enid said, and Arlo’s father, who wasn’t musical, did his best to sing along. Seated between Enid and his father, Arlo felt as if he were stuck between two radio stations and he was being delivered both the music and the news.

  The attendant asked if he wanted some lemonade.

  “I’d like some lemonade,” Enid said, but the attendant wouldn’t give her any because sugar made her agitated and didn’t interact well with her medications.

  “Where do you live?” Enid asked him.

  “In New York City,” Arlo said. He felt as if he were being asked this by someone who didn’t herself live in New York City, and he had to explain what New York City was.

  Now the attendant was asking him what he wanted to be when he grew up.

  “Rich,” he said.

  The attendant laughed. “Who doesn’t?”

  The difference was, the attendant was working in a nursing home, and he wasn’t going to work in a nursing home. Living with his father, he had his own bedroom with a lock on the door, and he was being given a small allowance and he was starting a part-time job. But that just made things worse. He’d gotten a taste of the good life, and now he wanted more of it.

  “You have a wonderful voice,” the attendant said.

  “Thank you,” Arlo said, though he’d only been humming.

  A Yiddish polka came on, and Enid took his hand. She wanted to dance the polka with him.

  Arlo didn’t know the Yiddish polka. He didn’t know the polka in any language. He didn’t even know what a polka was. He wasn’t a good dancer; he moved most effectively with a ball in his hands. But the only thing in his hands was Enid, his lumpish, blundering aunt, and he was afraid she would collapse beneath him. The polka was supposed to be fast, probably like the fox trot, though he didn’t know that either. The only thing he knew was the waltz, which he’d seen danced in old black-and-white movies and which his mother had taught him, saying, “Go ahead, darling, you’re the man, you take the lead.”

  Arlo led Enid around in a haphazard box step while the Yiddish music galloped past them.

  “Bravo!” the attendant called out, and Arlo’s father said, “Bravo!”

  Enid bent over and kissed Arlo’s hand. He started at the touch of her lips, brittle as onion skin.

  He stood in the hallway while his father kissed Enid goodbye. A visitor had arrived for someone else, and Arlo heard the words authorized guest. Enid must have had authorized guests, too. But then he realized it was just his father, the only guest Enid ever had, his father who arrived every other Sunday with the solemn duty of a churchgoer.

  * * *

  —

  On the subway home, Arlo’s father was silent. Grand Street to Broadway-Lafayette to West 4th Street to 34th Street to 42nd Street to Rockefeller Center to 7th Avenue to Columbus Circle. It was the route Arlo’s father had taken out of the Lower East Side.

  “I’m just thinking about Enid,” his father said. “And my parents. It makes me sad every time I go back.”

  Arlo thought of something Pru had once said, how his father was more fragile than he let on.

  “Do you think I should visit her more often? Is every other week enough?”

  Arlo shrugged: he didn’t know how often was enough.

  “I could go every week. I could go every day if it made a difference.”

  The conductor’s voice sputtered through the feedback. A deaf man, handing out business cards, trundled down the aisle.

  “I’m always saying that before the accident Enid and I were close.”

  “Were you?”

  His father shook his head. “A lot of siblings fought more than we did, but we were on different paths. My parents used to say about me, Enough naches for two.”

  “Tell me about the car accident,” Arlo said.

  “What’s there to say? The lesson to be learned is don’t drive drunk.”

  “Was Enid drinking?”

  “She might have been, for all I know. She did a lot of things earlier than she should have, but that wasn’t the problem that night.” His cousin Stanley had been the one at the wheel, but the other driver had been the one drinking.

  “Who’s Stanley?” Arlo said.

  “My mother’s sister’s son.”


  “Where is he now?”

  “In New Jersey. I haven’t seen him in years. What happened that night tore up two families. Three, probably, if you count the drunk driver, but it’s hard to care about him.”

  11

  A family reunion? When Arlo mentioned the idea, Sarah said, “There’s nobody to have a reunion with.”

  “What about Stanley?”

  “Who?”

  “Dad’s cousin.” Which made him Arlo’s cousin, too. They were headed now to Fort Lee, where Stanley and his wife Karen lived.

  “This is crazy,” Karen said when Arlo’s father got out of the car. “I don’t think we’ve seen you since our wedding.”

  In the foyer, a dachshund rubbed against Arlo’s leg, but Arlo was too distracted to notice. He was focused on Stanley, who had the same tuft of auburn hair as his father, the same lean body, the same long, straight nose as if it had been cut with a plane. Arlo had expected a small gathering, but there must have been forty people in the dining room, milling about in the chandelier light. “Are all these people our cousins?”

  “If they are,” Sarah said, “they’re distant cousins.”

  It was strange seeing Stanley talk to his father. Maybe it was the dachshund, which Stanley picked up and handed to his father, and now Arlo’s father wore a startled look. Or maybe it was the tetherball set on the lawn, or the large-screen TV, so different from the TV in Arlo’s father’s apartment, which was black-and-white and kept in the closet, and which his father called the boob tube.

  Sarah returned with a glass of ginger ale. “Some of them do appear to be our cousins.”

  “And the others?”

  “They’re probably people’s cousins, just not ours.” Several of the guests were from Karen’s side of the family. The next-door neighbors were there, too. If it had been just their relatives, there would have been no reunion to speak of. It was like a VIP event where the tickets went unclaimed, so it was opened to the public.

  Stanley tapped his fork against a glass. “I’d like to introduce my cousin, Arlo Zackheim. Arlo, would you please stand up?”

  Arlo was already standing up. He stepped forward.

  “It was Arlo’s idea to hold this event. I want to thank you for making this happen.”

  “You’re welcome,” Arlo said.

  “Would you like to say a few words?”

  Arlo stepped forward again. If he kept on going, he’d walk clear across the room. He thought of the playground game Red Rover. Red rover, red rover, let Arlo come over. “Well, all right,” he said. “Thank you. Thank you for coming. I didn’t know I had so many cousins. It’s good to meet you all.” He sat down on the chair that was closest to him.

  “To cousins!” someone called out, and someone else called out, “Blood is thicker than water!”

  His pulse abuzz, Arlo stepped out into the yard. The tetherball pole stood like a denuded tree, and Arlo, in his loafers and necktie, hit the ball and it snapped back at him.

  “Aren’t you cold?” someone said. It was Stanley. Arlo thought of his father’s words about his mother. Too cool to feel cold. Was the same thing true of him?

  Stanley returned with a down vest. He threaded Arlo’s hands through the holes, like someone helping his date with a coat.

  “Do you like tetherball?”

  Arlo shrugged. He’d never played much, but he was as happy as the next person to swat at a ball.

  “I used to play with my sons,” Stanley said. He was in just his tie and blazer; he was probably cold himself.

  “How many sons do you have?”

  “Twin boys,” Stanley said. “They’re sophomores at Rutgers. We were hoping they’d be here today, but they have midterms coming up.” Stanley hit the tetherball, and Arlo hit it back. “I’m sorry I asked you to speak. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  “That’s okay,” Arlo said. He explained to Stanley about his dyslexia, but it was clear he didn’t understand.

  Someone came out on the porch. “We’re the only two people wearing ties,” Arlo said.

  Stanley nodded. “Karen says she wouldn’t be surprised if I wore a tie to sleep.”

  “My father sometimes wears a tie to work, but never on weekends.”

  “Yet you wear one on weekends too.”

  Actually, Arlo hardly ever wore a tie. But today was a special day, though he was embarrassed to admit this to Stanley. “What was my father like when he was young?”

  “He was smart,” Stanley said, “but that probably won’t surprise you. We used to call him Professor.”

  “Everyone calls him that.”

  “But back then, he was only twelve.”

  “My father’s famous,” Arlo said, but now he felt foolish, because his father was famous in only the smallest of circles.

  “When he was a kid, your father was king of the handball courts.”

  “I beat my father at handball.” Why was he saying this? He was sixteen and his father was forty-five; it would have been embarrassing not to beat his father at handball.

  “I used to have this chinning bar,” Stanley said, “and my friends and I would see who could hang from it longer. When your father showed up, he wouldn’t let us win. We were older and stronger, but he was stronger up here.” Stanley pointed to his head.

  “I used to hold my breath until I turned blue.”

  “Well, that wasn’t very smart.”

  “I was only a baby,” Arlo said. Was he trying to show off?

  The wind picked up, and Arlo’s tie got wrapped around the tetherball pole. Someone had turned on the porch lights, and he noticed for the first time a tiny scar above Stanley’s right eye. Maybe it was from the car crash. “Tell me about my aunt.”

  “Who?”

  “Enid.”

  For a moment, Stanley appeared startled. “Enid was a wild one,” he said. “She ran before she walked, she flew before she jumped. She scared all of us, your father especially.”

  Arlo wanted to know about the car crash. Though he didn’t know what he wanted to know. The car crash had happened decades ago; he was rubbernecking thirty years after the fact.

  “After the accident,” Stanley said, “your father started to act out.”

  “How?”

  “You promise you won’t tell?”

  Arlo nodded.

  “He broke into someone’s house and wrote graffiti on the wall. The police showed up and arrested him. For a few weeks there, the professor became a juvenile delinquent.”

  “Did he go to jail?”

  Stanley shook his head. “Getting arrested scared him straight. Ever since then, he’s been a model citizen.”

  * * *

  —

  Arlo was quiet on the car ride home.

  “It was a nice afternoon,” his father said. “I’m glad you thought of this.”

  But Arlo had fallen into a funk. He’d wanted to understand his father: why, sometimes, he was overcome by gloom, why he retreated into work. But he didn’t think he would ever understand him. What could Stanley tell him—Stanley, who hadn’t seen his father in twenty-five years, not since his own wedding? Arlo should have made Stanley tell him about Enid, but Stanley would have wanted to know why he cared about Enid, a brain-damaged woman he’d met only once, whom he couldn’t even have a conversation with. “What did that person mean, ‘Blood is thicker than water’?”

  His father said, “It means blood relations are the most important ones.”

  Then why hadn’t Arlo met Stanley before? Why hadn’t his father seen him in twenty-five years? He wanted to ask his father about having been arrested, but he’d promised Stanley he wouldn’t tell.

  12

  At the bookstore, most of the other employees were graduate students, and they congregated outside during lunch, eating their takeout from pape
r bags. To save money, Arlo brought his lunch from home, which he ate in the stockroom, hunched over his food like a gigantic rodent. Sometimes Crenshaw would join him, and he would rest his paws on Arlo’s lap, and Arlo would grow congested.

  A couple of times Arlo mentioned the Yankees, thinking everyone could talk about baseball, but his coworkers weren’t interested in talking about the Yankees, at least not with him. Once, when they returned from the Chinese place on 116th, he asked how the food was, and when one of them said, “It’s edible, it serves the purposes,” he said, “Do they have moo shu pancakes?”

  Someone handed him the menu, but the pressure of people watching him made him illiterate once more. He ran his finger down the page—he acted as if the menu were in Braille—and he said, “Yup, they have moo shu pancakes,” though he didn’t know if they did.

  “We can pick you up an order,” someone said, and Arlo was forced to say he would like that, though he brought his lunch from home, and also, he didn’t like moo shu pancakes.

  One time, a couple of his coworkers were shelving books in Literature, and he said, “My father’s an English professor.”

  “So I heard,” one of them said, and the other one said, “Getting a head start on things, are you, there, Arlo?”

  He found one of his coworkers, lithe and attractive, trying to place a book high on a shelf. As she stood on tiptoe, her T-shirt rode up her stomach, and he caught a glimpse of her midriff, and of her silver bellybutton ring, which shone like a nickel in the light. “I’ll help you,” he said, and someone else said, “Easy does it, Arlo. You’ll get to grad school in due course.”

  After that, he spent even more time alone. He came to work when he was supposed to and he didn’t leave early, but he wasn’t as efficient as he’d have liked. One time, seeing him stare down at a box of books, Paul said, “Perseverating over the wares, Arlo?” and Arlo, who didn’t know what perseverating meant, simply said, “You bet.” Another time a coworker said, “Slow and steady wins the race,” and someone else, seeing him line up the books just so, said, “Perfect is the enemy of good. Just ask Voltaire.” His coworkers ribbed him good-naturedly, but when they weren’t doing that they were keeping their distance, which made him wonder whether the ribbing was as good-natured as he’d thought. He avoided the customers because his job was to stock, and because, when they asked him about books, the answers drained through him as if from a sieve.