The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street: A Novel

by Susan Jane Gilman

  “Up, up, up!” She clapped. I struggled to stand. The hem of my nightdress was caught in my brace.

  “Please,” I said as I untangled myself and wrestled with my crutches. “The toilet?”

  Mrs. Dinello shook her head and motioned between me and the door. It became clear that she expected me to make my way on my own. “Uno, due,” she counted, clapping out my steps. The problem wasn’t only my leg but my arms. I was just too small and too weak to hold myself up on the crutches for very long. I barely made it to her before I collapsed.

  “Di nuovo,” she said. “Again.”

  She pointed to the courtyard. As I struggled to the privy, Mrs. Dinello stood behind me and held the doors open. However, I had to figure out how to maneuver into the little stall by myself. My right leg was still rigid in its brace; I hopped on my left leg as I hoisted up my nightdress. I was terrified of falling in or not making it in time. Horse Girl: I could imagine the nicknames I’d be called if I soiled myself.

  After I did my business, Mrs. Dinello made me walk back through the narrow front hallway, then across the storefront unassisted. I did not understand why she pushed me so; it seemed she derived some sort of cruel pleasure from watching me struggle. The rubber nibs of my crutches sometimes caught in the floorboards. I yanked and flailed until I was nearly in tears. And somehow, when I did, I thought of Mama and Bella and Rose and Flora—perhaps hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles away by now—gone somewhere, I imagined, still looking for Papa. The details of what had happened were puzzle pieces, shards of something big and broken that I could not assemble. When would someone explain what was happening to me?

  I couldn’t help sniffling. But only when I had completed my trip across the kitchen did Mrs. Dinello help me back onto the bench and stuff extra cushions beneath my leg to keep it elevated. Only then did she feed me: a slice of dry bread bathed in a mixture of coffee and warm milk. Oh, how luxurious it seemed! I ate wolfishly, gratefully. I was ashamed of how hungry I was, of how animal and helpless I felt. While I chewed, Mrs. Dinello restacked the pails and put a kettle on the stove. Once the water was scalding, she poured it liberally over the large enamel tabletop and all the utensils in a baptism of steam. “Ai, ai, ai,” she muttered. Bandaging her hand in a thick towel, she picked up the spoons and spatulas and whisked them around in a soapy pail.

  When I finished my breakfast, she lifted the cup from my hands. As she did, for a moment we caught each other’s eyes, my face tilted up toward hers, a timid flower, I suppose, fragile, brown-eyed, trembling. Something in Mrs. Dinello’s face softened then. Her eyes seemed to thaw. She suddenly regarded me not with resentment but with something woeful and disbelieving—something akin to pity.

  Her fingertips were like raisins. Gently, she touched them to the base of my chin. “You are so tiny,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Who does this to a child?”

  Then she drew back and assessed me. “Tomorrow,” she announced, gesturing to the mess behind her, “you help.”

  Chapter 4

  My problems back then. Who could imagine the ones I have now?

  This morning, a car snakes up my driveway. A slick black sedan with tinted windows. Inside? One pain in my ass after another. Lawyers from Beecham, Mather & Greene. Biggest guns in the business. They’ve already gotten the assault charges against me dropped, but the parents, it seems, are still filing a civil suit: One ten-second mishap and they think I should subsidize their daughter for the rest of her life? Please. It’s not as if a horse kick left her crippled forever. Why, there wasn’t even much of a bruise! And as anyone could see, I was doing her a favor!

  I am also suing NBC for breach of contract. As I see it, they had simply been looking for any excuse to fire me all along. These new lawyers, they’re counseling against it. But so what? What do they really know from fighting? Patrician faces they have, all of them. Expensive, feathered haircuts. Pink shirts. Ties tossed over their shoulders. They write on legal pads with tortoiseshell pens. Such a new breed—nobody tells jokes anymore. I can’t distinguish one from another, except for Miss Slocum, the girl. A tiny thing, no taller than me. A pinched, serious face. Hair yellow and stiff as straw. She’s attractive, I suppose, in a plain, frontier-woman sort of way—in another era you could picture her in a gingham bonnet, driving a buggy with a whip. She wears blouses with oversize bows at the throat. When I asked her what these were for, she informed me they’re called “power bows.” I told her they reminded me of our mascot, Spreckles the Clown.

  The other lawyers insist, however, that it’s better to have me represented in court by a woman. This will “soften” me in the eyes of the jury, they claim. I don’t know who they think they’re kidding. One look at this Miss Slocum, and you know she’s a little viper.

  I’d wanted to use the same lawyer we’ve always had, but Isaac wouldn’t hear of it. “Edgar helped get you into this mess in the first place, Ma,” he said.

  Okay, so we fell a little behind in some paperwork. We improvised a few invoices when my records got muddled. I suppose the fact that Edgar is under indictment himself right now, it does not help matters. And so sue me: I once boasted, “Taxes are for pishers. Taxes are for the little people to pay.” For God’s sake, I was kidding. I was being a wisenheimer! How the hell was I supposed to know that the woman seated beside me at Trader Vic’s was a reporter for Page Six?

  So now we’ve got the tax-evasion charges along with the civil suit. One little slipup and people start digging through everything. It becomes a free-for-all, an open house for every disgruntled and slanderous nobody you’ve ever met in your life.

  The first time my new lawyers came here, I had Sunny serve them ice cream. Mocha chip, vanilla bourbon. Our old-fashioned style. Still our best. The gonifs, they sat there telling me how delicious it was—then billed me for the fifteen minutes they spent in my parlor eating it. So I sent them a bill in return—for exactly the same amount—charging them for the ice cream they consumed. Now whenever they come here, it’s strictly business. Which is too bad. Back when Edgar was our lawyer, Bert and I kept a tub of his favorite flavor on hand—black cherry—and we’d all sit around the pool afterward, washing it down with martinis.

  The only person I can stand to see nowadays? Jason. He’s home from college for the summer, so every Thursday he comes. I have my driver pick him up at the train station.

  Sunny helps me into my red silk kimono. She styles my hair for me. Fixes my face. Settles me into the lilac wing chair in the conservatory.

  “Turn up the air-conditioning,” I say. “And spray some Shalimar around here.”

  “I open the drapes for you, too, yes, Mrs. Dunkle?” she says, bowing in that little way she has. Filipinos. Nicest people on the planet. All these years and Sunny’s the only one who never talked to the press.

  She pulls a cord and unleashes the view: Beyond the lawn and the pool, I can see clear to the lake, to the jade hills rising gently from the opposite shore, scalloping the horizon. It is marvelous. But otherwise I don’t care for this house much. It was Bert’s taste, Bert’s dream. Bert used the tennis courts. Sure, the pool was nice when Jason was little. But now the upkeep is nothing but a pain in my ass. “Lil, you should use it,” Rita nags. “The exercise will help your leg.”

  I don’t want to help my leg. I’ve helped it enough. I’m tired. I’m done. I’m counting the days until I can return to Park Avenue. Give me New York any day. All these fancy bedroom communities, all these estates, they’re like aspic. Trust me, darlings: A big city is where you want to grow old. Concert halls and picture houses everywhere. Bakeries and liquor stores just around the corner. You can cling to your shopping cart so you don’t need your cane. People of all ages are outside: On any park bench, any crosstown bus, you’ve got yourself some vaudeville.

  But after the incident on my television show, some schmucks from the New York Post began camping out in front of my building, harassing the doormen. Photographers, gossip columnists. Geraldo Rivera s
howed up. The co-op board got all up in arms. Those shysters. Wall Street types, media moguls, all of them. They earn about $16 million apiece; you should see the preening that goes on in the damn elevator: the seven-hundred-dollar oxblood briefcases, the Armani suits, the cars these people drive. They’d sell their own daughters for a mention in Women’s Wear Daily or Town & Country. But suddenly I’m attracting “unwanted attention”? Please.

  Still, I had the staff close up the apartment—the way they used to every winter—and I came to Bedford. The lawyers thought it was best I “lie low” for a while. Tell that to the satellite trucks, I say.

  The gardener, the butler, the pool boy—they tiptoe around me here. Maybe it’s because they’re new employees, but even Sunny kowtows. “You scare them, Ma,” Isaac says.

  Why? Because I made them all sign confidentiality agreements? Because I speak my mind and know exactly what I want? Why should I pretend people are doing me a favor when I’m paying them? I have no use for that sort of nonsense.

  Once you reach a certain age, oh, the world assumes you’re stupid and deaf and irrelevant. Other women my age—darlings, they would make marvelous spies. They could slip in and out of the Soviet Union without anyone giving them a second glance.

  Not me, though. I make sure of it.

  “Sunny!” I yell into the intercom when I spot the Cadillac pull in to the driveway. “More gin!”

  My glass is empty already. From the side window, I can see my Cadillac turning and crunching to a halt. Hector comes around, opens the door, and my grandson unfurls himself.

  Jason.

  As he steps out onto the gravel, he yawns and stretches; he’s gangly, pantherlike, proud and new in his muscles, the way teenage boys so often are. For a moment he can’t resist pausing to glance at his reflection in the tinted windows. I watch him tilt his head and touch his jaw appraisingly. The top of his hair looks like a chrysanthemum, though it’s oddly long in back, clipped into a chevron. Who styles their hair like that? Half girl, half boy, as if the barber couldn’t make up his mind. He’s still got that farkakte safety pin stuck through his earlobe, too, and that ugly spiked dog collar he insists on wearing (Petunia’s is more elegant!). Also, one of those T-shirts he destroys himself. Its sleeves are ripped off, and the front looks clawed. Such a handsome boy, but this he has to do? The last time he paid me a visit, he even wore black eye makeup. His girlfriend put it on him, he said.

  “You’re sure you’re not just a feygeleh?” I said.

  He’s trying to look tough, I suppose, but a baby face is a baby face. Good luck disguising it. No matter. My grandson’s “look” rankles his mother even more than me, which I suspect is the whole point. Earlier this year Jason changed his major from economics to theater, too. Isaac practically had a heart attack and called me in a panic, but what do I care, really? The kid still has more business sense than his father. Let Isaac sweat it a little.

  Jason fiddles with a pair of sunglasses and drops them into the shopping bag he’s carrying. He lets out a long breath, as if bracing himself. Then he lopes across the gravel to my front door.

  “Hey, uh. How’s it going?” I hear him say to my butler, his voice echoing through the foyer. “Grandma’s upstairs?”

  He bounds up the marble staircase and is standing in the doorway in no time. Ah, youth! “Hey, Grams, what’s up?” he says. Slinging his shopping bag on top of the piano with a thunk!, he comes over to the chair, leans down, and gives me a quick, dry kiss on the cheek. He smells of baby powder and french fries. “Everything copacetic?”

  “Come closer.” I smile. “Let me get a look at you.”

  He makes a face but obliges. I put my hand to his cheek. I feel the downiness of his young skin. The boy is an Adonis—and he knows it. Deep-set green eyes, just like his grandfather. Fierce cheekbones. That mass of curls atop his head as dark as strong coffee. “Oh,” I say, “such a punim. Such a heartbreaker. Turn around.”

  “Grams,” he groans. But he does—with a tinge of bravado no less. He thinks I don’t see him flexing his biceps and straightening his shoulders, but I do. Young men are never so beautiful as when they are on the brink of nineteen.

  “Such a tuches!” I laugh, slapping him playfully on the backside. “Oy. What are those pants made out of?”

  “Leather.”

  “Leather? It’s eighty degrees outside. Who the hell wears leather in August? What’s ‘Sandinista’?” I motion to his shredded T-shirt.

  “An album by the Clash,” he says, staring down at his shirt as if he’s only just realized what he’s wearing. “I played it for you last week? Sandinistas are the socialist party in Nicaragua.”

  “Oh?” I adjust my eyeglasses. “So you’re a socialist now?”

  He sighs. “I’ve always been a socialist, Grams.”

  “Of course you are, tateleh.” I smile, patting his hand. “After all, I’m the one paying your tuition.

  “Sit,” I order.

  Jason pulls up a chair. One of the Hepplewhites, upholstered in peach silk, where Petunia likes to curl up. My grandson sprawls in it, his legs splayed. He’s like his great-grandfather; he can’t really sit still. His foot jiggles, he fidgets with that safety pin in his ear. He glances about. “I’ve only got like a couple of hours,” he says, eyeing the swimming pool. “I gotta catch the 2:54 back for rehearsal.” Jason is in a performance-art troupe called Alarm Clock. His father, however, refers to it as “the Future Unemployment Line of America.” I saw one of their shows in an abandoned warehouse off First Avenue last year. Jason made a big fuss over my coming, which I certainly appreciated—and of course, I kvelled over him. Yet I can’t say I cared for it much. It was all very loud, and the seating was terrible. Jason read a series of haikus I did not understand, then played an electric guitar while a couple of girls in greasepaint and sheets writhed around on the floor cursing Ronald Reagan. There was one poet, one girl in a tutu, one ukulele player, one unicyclist, one “interpretive dancer”—but no script. Everyone seemed angry about something. It was like vaudeville for the disgruntled.

  “We’re working on a new piece for Alarm Clock,” Jason says. “Thatcher, U.S. involvement in El Salvador, Bill Bennett—they’re all going in it. It’s going to be awesome.”

  Sunny knocks, the silver tray balanced awkwardly between her hip and the doorframe. “Mrs. Dunkle?”

  “Here.” I point to the coffee table. Supposedly it’s an original from France—Louis the Someteenth. “Just leave the bottle, the ice, everything. We don’t want to be disturbed.”

  “A new show. Really? Good for you,” I say. “Close the door!” I shout to Sunny.

  “Happy hour?” Jason says. “It’s barely noon, Grams.”

  “Oh, shush, you. You’ll have some, yes?”

  “Well”—he smiles slyly and wiggles his eyebrows—“if you insist.” Every time, it’s the same thing. Leaning in, he rubs his hands together expectantly. The drinking age in New York State was raised last year, so technically, I suppose, this is still illegal for my grandson. But we Jews didn’t spend forty years wandering the desert so that I could forfeit a gin and tonic with my progeny. As Jason reaches for the ice tongs, however, I slap his hand. “Not so fast. What did you bring me?”

  “Oh. Some truly awesome tunes,” he says, leaping up. He goes to the piano, pulls an album out of the bag. “You’ll either love them or hate them.” He holds up an ugly shocking pink record sleeve slashed with fluorescent green. “Classic punk.” He holds up another record, packaged in a blue paper sleeve. “And some new stuff, too. The Butthole Surfers. Some Aztec Camera. Grandmaster Flash.”

  “Okay, then.” I drop three ice cubes into my tumbler, then three into his. They sound like marbles hitting. “You know where the hi-fi is.”

  “Awesome.” He pulls out the bright pink square. Now he’s happy. Now he’s fully engaged. “We’ll start with this one first, definitely. The Sex Pistols.”

  I snap my fingers and point. “Bring it here. Let me see.�
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  “Johnny Rotten, the singer, has had another band for a while now, called PiL. But it’s not nearly as good.” Jason hands the album over to me proudly. I adjust my eyeglasses and study it.

  The cover looks like a hostage note.

  “Johnny Rotten?” I scowl. “His parents named him that?”

  “Nuh-uh. His real name is John Lydon. He changed it.”

  “Lydon/Rotten. Not much difference.” I shrug. “Now, if he changed it to Grossberger, that would be something.”

  While Jason sets up the record, I pour us both generous gin and tonics. In an instant the conservatory pulsates with violence. I hear a singer, if you can call him that, shrieking that he’s an Antichrist. That he wants to be anarchy. Sure he does, I think. Until he needs a fire department or the postal service. Petunia, who’s been sleeping on her pillow, leaps up in a seizure of panic and scampers under the sofa. “Okay. Enough with that one,” I say.

  Jason snatches the needle off the record with a zipping sound. “I wondered how long you’d last,” he says with a laugh.

  “If I wanted to listen to people yelling at me, I could just invite your parents for dinner.”

  “Affirmative. Okay, let’s try this, then.” He slides another record out of its sleeve and guides it gently onto the turntable.

  “Oh, hey,” he says as he settles back in. “Speaking of parents, Mom and Dad say hi, and…you know, they’re sorry they haven’t been up to visit, and blah-blah-blah.” He rolls his eyes at me.

  “Oh, do they now?” I say archly.

  Jason shrugs. “Hey, I hardly see them myself.…” His voice trails off.

  For a few minutes, we sip our gin and tonics and just listen. The music is a stuttering sort of computerized beat; it’s like music for robots. Finally a voice begins speaking about how he’s “close to the edge” and how he is trying not to lose his head, followed by a bitter sort of laugh. It is not altogether unpleasant at all. Certainly it’s original.

  After a moment I say, “He’s not really singing, is he?”