The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street: A Novel

by Susan Jane Gilman

  “It’s called rapping, Grandma.”

  “Rapping? Where I come from, it’s called kvetching.” Jason looks at me dryly. I can’t help smiling. He knows I’m being a wisenheimer.

  “Maybe I should rap, too,” I chuckle, stirring my gin and tonic with my finger. “If you believe the papers.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Jason frowns. “Like, what’s up with that?”

  “Meshuggenehs.” I shrug, reaching for the bottle. “As if I’m the first business owner ever to have a little workplace incident? Or get audited? Please. More gin, tateleh?”

  Jason smiles: flawless, orthodontiaed, all-American teeth, eggshell white and shining. His hair glistens. I study the perfect, childish face of my grandson as he dutifully toasts me with his second double gin and tonic. Together, Petunia and I listen to the music that enraptures him, sharing his abandon, his angry pleasure in it.

  People think teenagers are a pain in the ass. Well, they are, of course. But not if you tap into what they’re passionate about. People also think that if you’re old, you can’t appreciate anything new. Or if you do, it’s adorable. Put this in an advertisement, they say: Granny on a motorcycle—isn’t that funny? Show Granny rock-’n’-rolling around the kitchen with her Mop & Glo—isn’t that a hoot? Please. Don’t patronize me with such nonsense. The first time I heard Salvatore Dinello performing opera in his kitchen? Or Enrico Caruso and Sophie Tucker on the Victrola? Louis Armstrong? Billie Holiday? Benny Goodman? Judy Garland? Edith Piaf? Oh, each time it was like sparklers going off!

  Sinatra, him I never cared for much, because he sounded too much like the guys in my neighborhood. But Henry Mancini? Wonderful. Sarah Vaughan? Gene Kelly, as far as I’m concerned, was as good a singer as he was a dancer: like velvet. Johnny Mathis. Oh, and Harry Belafonte! Elvis, the Beatles, the Supremes—I liked them all, too, when they came out. My children couldn’t believe it. But if you’ve got to come up with a different flavor of ice cream each month, you had better be open to new ideas, darlings. You’ve got to stay fresh, innovative. Plus, we had guest stars perform live on our Sundae Morning Funhouse all the time. The “Dance-O-Rama” segment of the show was hugely popular. Some critic once accused us of ripping off American Bandstand, but it was a contest, for God’s sake, and just one song. That’s all that young children have the patience for! We got some big names in our studio, too, I’ll have you know. Dusty Springfield sang one week. Neil Sedaka. Frankie Valli. Ohio Express performed that hit of theirs, “Yummy Yummy Yummy,” which the children positively loved. In the seventies Bobby Sherman came on and agreed to dub himself “Bobby Sherbet.”

  Of course, my favorite singer of all time is Johnny Cash. That baritone of his is like hot fudge just brought to a boil. We never got him to sing on the Sundae Morning Funhouse, though. But I used to play his records at home so often, Bert would get jealous.

  Jason lifts his glass to the light and frowns.

  “Oh, dear. Empty,” I say. “Would you like another?”

  He shakes his head and winks mischievously. Digging down deep into the pocket of his leather pants—it’s a wonder he can get his hand in, that leather looks so tight—he pulls out a slim little twist of paper. “Ta-da.” He grins. “Time to pump up the volume, eh, Grams?”

  “Oh, you horrible child!” I swat him on the knee. “Tempting me like this. The ashtray’s over there”—I point—“by the piano. The matches are in the box.”

  My grandson scrambles up, retrieves all the paraphernalia, then lights up. He takes several deep drags, then passes it to me carefully pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

  This is always our favorite part of the visit.

  “Wow,” he says, grinning as he exhales. He coughs a bit. “You know, if the ’rents ever saw us doing this, they’d have a total shit fit.”

  “So let them,” I say. “What else are grandmothers for, tateleh?” I struggle to keep the smoke deep in my lungs, just as Jason has taught me. I begin coughing, too, and try to turn it into a chuckle. The taste I don’t care for much, but the effect is extremely pleasant.

  I motion to him to refill our tumblers. “So tell me everything,” I say. “The girl, your ghastly parents, the summer job, the Alarm Clock—”

  “Okay,” he says dreamily, glancing around the room. “Hey, you don’t by any chance, like, have some ice cream?”

  I giggle. “Oh, you little schnorrer. Mmm. Let me think. There’s Rocky Road. Maple walnut. Strawberry. Coffee. I think there’s also some vanilla fudge left—”

  “Oooh.” He smiles lasciviously. “They all sound so, so good.”

  “Don’t they, now!” I clasp my hands together. “Maple walnut. Oh, my.”

  “Oh, man,” he moans to the ceiling. “I am so baked.”

  I press the button on the intercom.

  “Yes, Mrs. Dunkle?” Sunny’s disembodied voice. I have never noticed this until now: Intercoms are astonishing. A human voice, right out of a little speaker! Right out of thin air, really! Words from a box! All of it: electricity, magnets, plastic. It’s a tiny miracle! Who actually invented the intercom? I wonder. Certainly, I will have to look it up.

  “We need spoons.” I hiccup. “And a few ice cream scoops.” I’m having trouble, I realize, fully moving my jaw. The room around me suddenly looks a bit like film caught in a projector. “The vanilla fudge, the Rocky— Oh, hell. Bring up everything in the Frigidaire.”

  “Everything, Mrs. Dunkle?”

  “Yes! No! Just the ice cream.”

  That voice in the box—it disappears.

  Then I realize I’ve forgotten something. I press the button on the intercom again.

  “Yes, Mrs. Dunkle?”

  “You’re a mensch, Sunny, you know that?”

  “Um, yes, thank you, Mrs. Dunkle.”

  Then it disappears again, and I remember something else and push the button.

  “Yes, Mrs. Dunkle?”

  “My grandson,” I whisper loudly. “Is he not an Adonis? Have you ever seen anything more beautiful in this world than my grandson?”

  “Uh, your grandson, he is a very nice young man, Mrs. Dunkle.”

  “And such a tuches on him! Did you see? Just like his grandfather—”

  “Grandma!” Jason groans.

  There is a pause over the intercom. “Um, his grandfather was a very lovely man, too, yes, Mrs. Dunkle.”

  “My grandson, Sunny? You think he loves me?” I say loudly into the intercom. “Or is he just paying me all this attention because he’s after my money?”

  Jason sits up suddenly. His face reddens. “Grandma!”

  From over the intercom, I can hear Sunny take a deep breath. “Oh, Mrs. Dunkle. Your grandson is a very sweet boy. I come with the ice cream now, yes?”

  I look at Jason, his face arranged into a dramatic, wounded look of incredulity. “Grandma, c’mon. Do you actually, like, really believe—”

  “Oh, shush, you,” I say. “Don’t even try. You think I don’t know why some college kid would go out of his way every week to visit his damn grandmother? Why you’d schlep all the way up to a dreary mansion in Bedford when you could be out at the beach all summer?”

  Jason stares at me. He’s utterly at a loss for what to say. Youth: They always think they’re cleverer and cannier than they ever really are.

  “So what?” I say. “So I let you drink and smoke marijuana? You think I don’t know that you could be doing the same things with your friends?”

  “You think, like, I’m partying with you just to, like, get in good with you?” Jason says slowly.

  “Well, it’s more fun than being with your horrible parents,” I concede. “But of course you’re hustling me, tateleh! And why shouldn’t you? At least one person in this family besides me ought to have some brains, a little naked ambition. You think I give a damn?”

  He stares at me. After a moment he says carefully, “Uh, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say.”

  “Please,” I tell him. “Just keep visiting
whenever you’re back from school, and I’ll take good care of you, tateleh. You understand? Just don’t bullshit me.”

  Sunny arrives with the ice cream, five quarts crammed onto a tray with two of my little cut-glass dishes and the utensils. She sets it down on the Louis-the-Something table next to the gin.

  “Take the lids off the quarts,” I say. “I can’t do it with my arthritis.”

  Jason leans forward to assist her.

  “It needs to thaw,” I tell him. “It’s too hard.”

  “Nuh-uh. I got it,” he says quietly. With the scoop he gouges into the first fresh quart—strawberry—and spoons a heap of glistening pink into one of the little crystal bowls. He reaches for the Rocky Road next, his muscles flexing, his face grave. “You like all of these, right, Grandma?”

  From the hi-fi the singer who talks instead of sings is describing the street noise and the bad stench of the ghetto. “It’s like a jungle sometimes,” he says.

  I reach over and take my dish of ice cream from my grandson. He looks stricken. And suddenly, for some reason, I’m overcome by sadness, a wallop of grief. Is this what it has all come to? How did it turn out like this? I can feel it in my eyes, swelling. “Oh,” I say with surprise. I grip the padded armrest of my chair.

  Jason stops in the middle of scooping. “Grandma? You okay?”

  I shake my head and wave him off. I cough, pound myself on the breastbone.

  “This singer,” I remark, blinking behind my eyeglasses and pointing to the hi-fi. “So much complaining. Please. That neighborhood of his sounds no worse than mine was, growing up.”

  Chapter 5

  People never sufficiently appreciate their saviors. Look at France, for God’s sake. Or Japan. After the war, we rebuilt their economy—and what thanks do we get? They’re taking over the world again with their cars and electronics.

  Myself, I was no exception. In 1913 there were floods of immigrants and a polio epidemic in New York. Hospitals, charities, social services were stretched to breaking. I was nobody’s priority. I was falling through the cracks. But the Dinellos, they caught me.

  On the food they fed me, I grew less feeble. My shattered bones began to mend thanks to dandelion greens sautéed in lemon and garlic, to broccoli rabe and soft cheese, to lenticchie and pasta e fagioli that Mrs. Dinello simmered every day in a cast-iron pot.

  The Dinellos insisted I earn my keep, too—which was a gift in itself, darlings.

  Each morning, as soon as the ingredients for the lemon ices were assembled, Mrs. Dinello clamped my hands onto the handle of the beastly ice cream maker and forced me to crank it in tandem with her. Up, forward, and over. Up, forward, and over. The ice chunks put up a lot of resistance; the crunching sound was hideous. Pain shot down my side where my ribs had been broken. But Mrs. Dinello kept her hands on mine. “Only your legs are crippled, not your arms,” she said, flexing her biceps and pointing. “This make you strong, you understand? Capisce?”

  Up, forward, and over. Up, forward, and over. The barrel creaked, gears squealed. When we finally finished, Mrs. Dinello’s housedress gave off a musky stench; her damp bosom stuck against the back of my neck. My arms trembled. Mr. Dinello himself had to unscrew the barrel top and pull out the dasher. And yet after just a week of such torture, I found that I could in fact hoist myself up on my crutches with greater ease. My arms had grown sturdier.

  Beatrice taught me to hem lace as well, so I could do piecework for Mrs. Salucci upstairs. It was painstaking, tedious work, done under the anemic light of one small gas lamp in the office, but it was a job I could do sitting in the storefront. With my child’s tiny fingers, I proved to be unusually adept at working the fine thread around the most delicate bobbins. For the very first order I completed, Mrs. Salucci paid the Dinellos twenty cents. That was a lot of money in those days, trust me.

  “Molto buono,” Mrs. Dinello said. Taking a mason jar from the shelf, she popped a single penny into it and pointed at me. “This we save for the moving pictures.”

  Mrs. Dinello, I quickly learned, was obsessed with two activities besides earning money: attending church and going to the movies. That is, until one evening when the front door banged open and Luigi and Vincenzo staggered into the storefront carrying a polished wooden box the size of a small trunk. Behind them came Silvio, clutching a stack of flat squares to his chest and singing at the top of his lungs.

  That evening everyone in the Mulberry Street tenement crowded eagerly into the storefront. For many of us, it was the first time we’d ever heard a gramophone. It was a small, honey-colored box with a small brass crank, designed by the Victor Company for listeners of modest means; indeed, Luigi had won it from another sandhog in a card game. A horn was tucked on the underside of the little tabletop cabinet, and it needed to be rewound after every two songs. The records themselves—oh, they were like dinner plates.

  Yet the amazement! How did the sound rise off of those flat black disks? Where were the instruments coming from? Six records had been won with the deal, and after Mrs. Dinello finished admonishing her sons for gambling, the Dinello brothers played them over and over again. “I Want A Girl Just Like The Girl That Married Dear Old Dad.” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” And then a trembling tenor filled the ices factory. Enrico Caruso. He sang “Addio Mia Bella Napoli,” “Canta Pe’ Me,” and “Ave Maria”—all in Italian, of course. Gathered by the Victrola, Silvio and Mrs. Dinello openly wept. Beatrice and Mr. Dinello waltzed. All the grandsons were strangely quiet, almost not daring to breathe. Mrs. Ferrendino closed her eyes rapturously. Mrs. Salucci frowned with disapproval. A few neighbors sang along; someone ran upstairs and returned with a bottle of grappa. Immigrants, all of us, and every one of us astonished.

  Today everybody’s such a wisenheimer, a know-it-all. Everyone’s a critic. Nothing surprises us anymore. Even the moon landing: We’d been hearing about it for years before Neil Armstrong finally took his first step. But to hear a Victrola for the very first time? Darlings, it was miraculous. It was like falling in love.

  Afterward the Dinello boys carried their prize upstairs, where it was given a place of honor in the Dinellos’ parlor beside the mantelpiece flanked by the two grim portraits of Mrs. Dinello’s parents that she’d carried all the way over from Napoli. From then on, with the door propped open and the cabinet angled toward the air shaft, Mrs. Dinello made sure that the entire tenement could listen to “Canta Pe’ Me” or “When You and I Were Young, Maggie,” as we worked.

  Yet not for a moment did I stop thinking about my family, picturing them all reunited happily somewhere in South Africa without me. My yearning and shame throbbed like a heartbeat. Why had nobody sent for me? Why was I still being punished?

  Every Sunday morning the Dinellos went out—the men in derbies, the women’s heads draped in veils, the boys freshly scrubbed. All of Mulberry Street was still, except for the bonging of church bells. The carillons seemed to reverberate off the empty fire escapes and shuttered storefronts. I sat alone in the kitchen and listened sullenly. As soon as I was sure they were gone, I hobbled over to the Dinellos’ desk and pulled open the drawers. I riffled through the ledger books and piles of receipts tucked inside. I pried open a tin of violet candy to find that it contained not candy at all but a thin loop of wooden beads with an X dangling from it—a copy of so many I’d seen around, threaded through women’s trembling fingers like lace. This one, though, I put on over my pinafore like a necklace. I pawed through letters in fragile onionskin envelopes, holding them to the light even though I could not read. Sometimes I played with Mrs. Dinello’s precious pen, pretending to dip it into the inkwell and write numbers in columns, as she did. I fingered the lozenges of her small abacus. I pretended to be a shopkeeper in Hamburg, impressing my mother with my industriousness. How clever Malka is, I imagined Mama saying as she walked in awe through my shop. Look at her making so much money for us selling pencils and necklaces! I made sure to put everything back before the Dinellos returned. Yet I part
icularly liked the wooden necklace, and once I forgot to remove it. I discovered it hours later still dangling against my pinafore. Yet no one had paid me any mind. The whole family clambered directly upstairs when they returned. I could hear boisterousness, the clatter of pots, tables being set. I could smell tomato sauce simmering, that delirious scent of garlic and sweetness and frying meat. I could hear Mrs. Dinello reciting a string of prayers over her children and grandchildren and, later, the entire family assembling for their dinner without me.

  One Sunday after the family meal, Mr. Dinello lumbered down to the storefront carrying a small bottle with a stopper.

  “Salute, Ninella. You help me today, si?” he said. “We make the special dolce.”

  I tried to scowl and appear indifferent. But the truth was, anything to do with food interested me. Taking bottles of milk and cream from the icebox, Mr. Dinello measured their contents into a large porcelain bowl, cracked a few eggs with a theatrical flutter, and whisked in generous scoops of sugar. He added several drops of pearly brown liquid from his vial. “Mm, buono, si?” he said, running it under my nose to sniff. I had to admit: It smelled marvelous.

  Ice chips were still in the icebox from Saturday. After Mr. Dinello loaded them into the barrel and sprinkled them with rock salt, he had me crank the ices maker with him all over again.

  “O Mimì, tu più non torni,” he sang gently. “Now you.”

  “O Mimì, tu più non torni,” I parroted.

  “Di nouvo.” He sang another line and waited for me to copy. Together, in fits and starts, we sang—strange, beautiful arias in Italian.

  Mr. Dinello winked. “The singing, she is the secret ingredient.”

  Finally he unscrewed the barrel top. Usually when we made Italian ices, the dasher came out dripping with translucent chunks. Yet now it was coated in thick gobs of what looked like sloppy butter. Scraping off a great quantity with a spoon, Mr. Dinello handed it to me. “Mm. You like, si?”

  The white gooeyness was peculiar; the wisps of frosty steam rising from the container made it look almost dangerous. But Mr. Dinello rubbed his stomach with exaggerated motions: Gelato. Delizioso.