Hot Flashes

by Raskin, Barbara;

  “Well,” he sighs. “At least Sukie’s mama didn’t live to see this. That’s good.”

  Suddenly Happy springs to attention and comes skittering across the kitchen floor, sniffing for the owner of the raspy voice she’s recognized. At the same moment, Mr. Smilow remembers the dog and reaches down for her, locking his hands around her head to steady it as he looks into her eyes.

  “It’s the dog,” he says, in a voice stricken at having forgotten and now flooding with remembrances. “I forgot her dog.” Then, for the first time, he allows a few sentimental tears to surface. “At first it doesn’t seem fair a person dies and a pet goes on living. But after a while it’s sort of nice, like a link.…”

  At that point, everyone suddenly begins to move about.

  “Coffee, Mr. Smilow?” Elaine offers. “Tea, Rosetta? May we call you Rosetta?”

  “Schnapps?” Norman asks.

  A brief ballet of beverage service begins, as if we are on a plane that has suddenly reached its cruising altitude.

  Mr. Smilow accepts a gin and tonic, removes the slice of lime Joanne has dropped in the glass, mumbles something about “garbage,” and then leans back in his chair.

  “So at least she won’t have to bury me. That’s good. She buried her mama and that was enough. The city owes me my burial.”

  “Manny, what are you saying?” Rosetta complains, pressing one hand to her head and the other over the plump round breast hiding her heart. “You’re making me crazy.”

  “And I never sent Sukie her mama’s mink coat like I promised. My sugar plum didn’t want it. She said Washington didn’t get so cold.”

  His sister watches his face as he speaks.

  “So now, Rosetta, you’ll take it. It’s that ranch mink. It’s a good one. Full-length, half-belt in the back. Got it as a replacement for the midnight one that got stolen from Clara’s dentist’s office. Was a thief who just walked through the Medical Arts Building taking fur coats out of waiting rooms. Insurance company paid in a minute. Knew all about that gonif. Then I upgraded a little. Got her a little better coat. And who else should have it? Carol? She wouldn’t be caught dead in a fur that came off an animal. And now there’s no other family left. Also there’s a few white-gold cocktail rings.” His voice falters. “First the divorce and then she dies.”

  Finally Mr. Smilow breaks down, folds his arms on top of the table, tucks his head into their dark cave and starts to cry.

  Actually, he doesn’t cry. He shakes.

  We watch him.

  I try to think of him as a young man, the fight promoter who took his little daughter to the gyms where his fighters worked out, and to the Standard Club where he played cards in the afternoon. Sukie told me that when he won big, he would return home to their South Side apartment with extravagant gifts for her. One winter, when she was five, he brought her a matching white rabbit coat, hat and leggings to wear to a Golden Gloves welterweight championship fight.

  Another night, during a bad blizzard, he came home with snowflakes clinging to his bushy eyebrows and the furry collar of his heavy storm coat, and called Sukie into the hallway. Saying his hands were cold, he asked her to fish his keys out of the deep dark secret of his coat pocket, and when she did, a Chihuahua puppy curled up inside peeked out and Sukie screamed as she delivered it into the light.

  Clearly, Manny Smilow had been a decent, loving father because Sukie always liked and often defended men by factoring their frailties into her explanations of what seemed, to the rest of us, impossibly unforgivable behavior.

  “The children?” Mr. Smilow finally mumbles.

  “They’re in New York with Max’s parents,” Elaine answers. “They’ll get here tomorrow.”

  “Soon enough.” He nods thoughtfully, grieving for the death of his daughter’s family as well as for his daughter. “She’d be ashamed to leave them. A mother never wants to abandon her children, even if they’re almost grown.”

  Then he gets up and goes to stand by the back door to look out through the barred window at a small piece of striped blue sky. “It’s selfish, but I wish she’d gotten sick first before she died. Then I could’ve come here to take care of her for a while and we’d have gotten a chance to talk.”

  He snaps his fingers so that Happy comes running over to jump up and dribble down the side of Mr. Smilow’s leg again and again. Finally her excitement peaks and she rolls over on the floor, inviting Mr. Smilow to scratch her stomach.

  Slowly, Manny Smilow bends down to oblige the dog.

  “This is a calamity,” he says, thoughtfully extending the span of his hand to increase the territory he’s scratching. “This is a true calamity.”

  Then he returns to sit in his chair again.

  “And the schlemazel? Max?”

  “He just got back to Washington,” I say.

  He registers my words with a nod. “Max,” he says, shaking his head. “Max.”

  The name becomes a song of despair on Mr. Smilow’s tongue.

  “Max never helped her. All he did was listen to his stereo while she took care of the kids. When they all had to go out as a family together, he got himself ready and then sat down to wait for Sukie to fix herself and the children while he played The Firedance on his hi-fi with a bass boost.

  “He was a real luftmensch, Max, you know? Above it all. So she had to pick up after him. For twenty years she picks up after him and then he picks up and leaves her. Can you believe that? He leaves her? Him? Who never made a decent living with his big social group theories and his big ethnic gangs book? But that’s what she wanted. She didn’t want to know from the rackets or from the business world. The middle class? It made her want to vomit. She was an idealist. She wanted equality in the world. So.” He shrugs. “Look at the equality we got. It’s schrecklich.”

  Manny Smilow crosses his legs, locks his hands around one knee, and begins to rock back and forth.

  “And temperamental? Sukie was a prima donna from day one. Never satisfied with the ordinary, always wanting something more. Oh, her mama could tell you. Sukie had a rage to live. From the minute she was born, she wanted to do everything, go every place, know everybody. No. She wanted to be everybody. First she wanted to be Sister Kenny and cure polio. Then she wanted to be Eleanor Roosevelt and help the Jews. Next she wanted to be Natalie Wood in Miracle on 34th Street and then Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet. She even wanted to be Roddy McDowall in Lassie Come Home. Lots of times she wanted to be a boy. Maybe that would’ve been better for her. Who knows?”

  He nods his head solemnly in rhythm with his rocking.

  “Everything she wanted to do and learn. But at school? Nothing, absolutely nothing. She even got suspended from kindergarten. From kindergarten! She wouldn’t stand up for ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ Why not? Even Sukeleh didn’t know why not. And her sewing class? That she fails. Into junior high school. On probation. The genius, on probation. And algebra? Forget it. Civics? I had to go meet the principal because Sukie sassed the teacher. A Miss Yates. Oy, a real battleaxe. She told the class all labor leaders were crooks, so Sukie called her a name and got tossed out of school again. Again.”

  We are all quiet, soothed by hearing Sukie’s history in her father’s intimate immigrant voice.

  “Reading. That’s all she wanted. A book a day she read. Right through the card catalogue at our own public library. And the librarians? Very nice ladies—they liked her. Miss Rood. She let Sukie take out more than the five-books-a-day limit when she was only eleven. It’s Miss Rood decided to let Sukie into Adult Books. So there, right away, my sugar plum finds A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Eleven times she read it. She cries and cries because the little Francie in that book doesn’t know from menstruation and thinks it’s her heart that’s broken and bleeding. Instead of the other. Next Sukie reads The Egg and I, then Cheaper by the Dozen. Those are okay. But then, God help us, it’s Forever Amber and nothing’s ever the same again.”

  Elaine smiles with enormous gratitude. “I think
it’s wonderful that you knew—I mean, that you can remember—what Sukie read, Mr. Smilow.”

  “What? I shouldn’t know what my own child, my only child, was reading? As soon as she finished a book, then I read it next. Then her mother. So we could see what got into her head. We were a reading family. Together. And also we had to so we would know what was coming next. Because after Forever Amber, nothing was ever the same for my family ever again

  “The minute she got to high school, she got completely boy-crazy. Right away she wants to wear makeup, a color purple lipstick, ‘Orchids to You’ is its name, I still remember. And straight skirts. Tight, that tuck around the bottom. But her mama says no, no way, lipstick at fourteen. No way, straight skirts that tuck under, because now our Sukie already wants to go to parties where they play post office. She wants to go steady and wear some boy’s schmatta club jacket that’s too big for her. Oh no. So we sit on her for a while; we don’t let her go noplace.

  “Then next what does she want? To go to college. To go to Chicago University. To enter early, right? Early entrance they call it. At fifteen. She couldn’t wait. So what then? Then she wants to ‘place out’ of everything. At that grosse university, you pass an examination from a certain course, you get the credit and don’t have to take the course. Now she wants to place out of all the classes she wanted to go to college to take. She wants to be done with college before she starts.

  “And who does she find there at the big Chicago University? Philip Roth she finds, the big dirty-mouth, the turncoat against the Jews. Him she falls for. Never does he talk to her, but she keeps washing clothes all the time so she can see him at the laundromat. She even wears high heels to do her laundry. And every night she has to eat at the Tropical Hut so she can see Mr. Big Mouth who sits in there because he’s after some shiksa waitress. Now my Sukie goes there to watch him watch his shiksa. Sick. Sick. This I needed? This her sainted mother needed? Like a hole in the head.”

  I laugh.

  Mr. Smilow looks a reprimand at me.

  “Crazy she was about life and about living. New York. Next she wants to go live in New York and be a writer. A Grace Metalious she wants to be, fat like a pig in blue jeans. Or else to San Francisco to find the beatniks. Jack Kerouac she wants to find. To the City Lights Bookstore she’s running, to find them all. Allen Ginsberg? That’s a Jew? A homosexual Jew? Vey ist mir. Her mama and me, we had to hold on tight to her. But one day she disappears and next we know she’s a stewardess for Delta Airlines. She tells them she’s twenty-one years old and a German Lutheran, no less. Where did she get that from? Nineteen she was, from a good Jewish home.

  “So right away she’s the valedictorian of the stewardess class and her prize is she gets to choose her base. Then back she comes to Chicago because now she wants to take her masters. Her masters? Three days a week she’s a flyer and two days a week she’s a scholar. And that’s how she found Max. Back at the university. He sees what he thinks is a shiksa in her flying uniform with the wings on her blouse, on the breast pocket, no less, and right away he gets hot pants. So then Sukie’s happy. Oh, he’s so smart, she tells us. Uh-huh. So smart that boychik was. A nahrisherkind. A big sociologist. A student of mankind. A bulvan he was, a shlubb. A dreamer, a wild dreamer.

  “Together they were going to save the world. They were going to work for racial equality. For nuclear disarmament. For whales. For seals. For environment protection. For civil rights. For blacks. Say ‘blacks,’ Sukie tells me. No more should I say ‘Negroes.’ Instead now I’m supposed to say ‘blacks.’ But I couldn’t say it. You’ve got to say it, Sukie yells at me. You’ve got to. Finally I could say it and then that makes Max happy, so she’s happy. They’re happy together because now I can say ‘blacks,’ nu?”

  Mr. Smilow begins to cry.

  We wait.

  Rosetta stands up and pats her brother on his head, which only makes him cry harder. There is heavy silence until he regains his composure. Gradually he revives, sips his drink, and returns to his epic.

  “So at last he finishes his degree. His doctor’s. Not a real doctor’s, a Ph.D. PH is for ‘Phony.’ So they move to Washington because at last he gets a job. But in Washington—my Sukeleh worked hard, with a job full-time and two kids, and staying up half the night to write her stories, working all day, and running back and forth. Always she’s schlepping the kids to marches and demonstrations and sit-downs and stand-ups or making fund-raisers for Schnick. And always people are staying at their home for marches. Why? Why such a hectic life? But she was a shtarke, schlepping groceries and liquor cartons and making parties for Max’s friends. She was a regular life force.”

  He makes a valiant struggle not to cry again.

  “And then right when she could start to take things a little easier, the kids are almost grown, she’s sold a few books, then Max leaves. Just like that.”

  Mr. Smilow snaps his fingers.

  Immediately, Happy rushes back to resume their relationship.

  “I’m not saying she was an angel. She tested Max. She tested Max for a long time with her moods, her discontent, her disappointments. That’s not easy for a man, either. I’m not saying it is. But he didn’t act like a mensch. Right after her mama dies, he takes a powder.

  “But look how much I’m talking about myself. I should ask about you. How much each of you will miss Sukie. Because I don’t know any of you except I know that you all must have cared for her because she loved her friends. Always on the telephone she said, Daddy, This One just wrote a fabulous book and This One just finished medical school, Daddy, and she has three-year-old twins, and this one just did this and this one just did that. She loved you all. She was proud of her girlfriends.” He pauses for a moment to look at Norman with puzzled curiosity, but then decides not to inquire about his connection to Sukie. “Always she was running to someone who just had a baby or, God forbid, a female operation. A heart of gold she had. But was she ever happy? Who knows? A part of her died when her mama died. And her own children? Aach, who knows?”

  His voice evaporates and he seems to drift away.

  “Mr. Smilow,” Elaine says, “we’d like to talk about the kind of service …”

  “Not now, sweetheart.” Mr. Smilow shakes his head.

  “Just give him a minute to recover,” Rosetta suggests. “Also back at the hotel I have a box with my baking pans I brought on the plane. My other brother had the best bagel factory in Chicago. Of course, it was my recipe he used. But tomorrow, first thing in the morning, I’ll get here early and start baking. Everything we need for the reception. For how many? Maybe a hundred? Two hundred?”

  “The reception?” Elaine echoes in a shocked voice.

  “Of course.” Rosetta nods vehemently. “We need to have a reception. Directly following the burial. Everyone should come back here and I don’t want there to be any store-bought sweets.…”

  “But the worst,” Mr. Smilow moans as he suddenly starts speaking again, “the worst were our fights about politics. She had no respect for authority. My own grandfather was cut in half by the Cossacks because he got stuck in the trapdoor of a hayloft, and then I have a daughter who’s too good for America. America, she says, is too materialistic, too middle-class; capitalism corrupts, she says. She has no respect for the American government, for the American way of life. No gratitude that they gave me a home so she could be born here.

  “And for Israel? Forget it. A long, hard struggle the Jews had before they could finally come to rest in Israel, and does she care? No. The Arabs she worries about.…”

  The doorbell rings.

  “This is starting to sound like a sitcom,” Joanne whispers to me as she gets up.

  Several minutes later, when she returns with Max, it is clear she has warned him about Mr. Smilow. Max sidles through the swinging door looking totally subdued and bereaved. He approaches Mr. Smilow silently, grief and guilt making him walk gingerly.

  Mr. Smilow does not stand up.

  Max stops. Then,
slowly and purposefully, he extends his hand.

  Mr. Smilow suddenly busies himself with his drink.

  “Hello, Max,” Rosetta says, without stirring from her chair.

  A hot flash flushes my face. I feel beads of sweat form like a headband along my hairline.

  Max is nodding.

  He is nodding at everyone and everything. By nodding, he is conceding the circumstances. He is accepting Mr. Smilow’s scorn. He is accepting the ironies and cultural contradictions of this situation. He is accepting his own defection and deficiencies. Finally he moves away from the table area and leans against the sink, out of Manny Smilow’s view. Max owes him that much, not to contaminate his field of vision and just to stand in disgraced attendance while accepting the blame for his blasphemous behavior.

  “So,” Mr. Smilow says, as if Max had never appeared, “Sukie told me she was writing a new book.…”

  “She was,” Joanne responds eagerly, returning to her chair. “She didn’t tell us about it, but a friend of hers who’s been editing it says it’s quite good.”

  “Did she finish?” her father asks.

  Reluctantly, Joanne shakes her head.

  “I’d like to see it anyway,” Mr. Smilow says, smiling.

  “Manny,” Max says, stepping forward to seize the opportunity to be of some service to his former father-in-law, “I heard about the book from the kids, so I asked about it as soon as I got back. I was pretty upset to hear”—he pauses and adopts a falsely forgiving tone—“that some young man friend of Sukie’s has the manuscript. So last night I went looking for the guy, since he doesn’t even have a telephone.”

  “What?” Manny Smilow shouts, jumping out of his chair. “You? You went to pick up my Sukie’s book? You? How dare you?”

  “Not for me, Manny,” Max says nervously, stepping back and bumping into Happy, so that he has to jump sideways to avoid stepping on her. “For the children. For their sake. Whether it’s finished enough to be published or not, they’re the heirs.…”