The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street: A Novel

by Susan Jane Gilman

  Bert shrugged. “Lots of companies have franchises nowadays, doll. It seems to me there should be room for both kinds of ice cream. Luxury and regular.”

  “So you don’t think we should bother with it? Not even a few limited-edition test flavors?”

  Bert reached over and poured himself a second glass of wine. “H-honestly? I don’t know, Lil. Frankly, I don’t trust my own judgment on these things anymore. You’re the expert here, not me. I’m sure whatever you decide, it will be the right choice.”

  “I don’t want to decide this time.” I scrunched up my napkin in my lap. “I’m asking for advice, Bert. I need your opinion.”

  “That is my opinion, doll.”

  “That is not an opinion, Bert. That is a relinquishing of responsibility. That is a ‘passing of the buck,’ as Truman said.”

  “Lil, please.” Bert touched the back of my hand, his face arranged in an ingratiating smile. “We’re here at the beach. We’re supposed to be on vacation. The sun is shining. We have nice wine to drink and a pool right here in front of us. We’re having a wonderful party this evening. Isaac is here. Rita and Jason. Can’t we just relax for a few minutes, you and I? Have a swim maybe, and not talk about business?”

  Instantly I felt my face flush. “No. No, we cannot ‘just relax’ and ‘not talk about business.’ Do you have any idea at all, Bert, how vigilant I have to be? How much still has to be done?”

  “L-L-L-L-L-L-L—”

  “Don’t ‘L-L-Lil’ me.” I banged on the table. “While you’re off playing golf and tennis, who do you think is manning our store? Spreckles the goddamn Clown? Your fainthearted son? Do you have any appreciation for what is potentially at risk with these new franchises coming onto the market?” I waved my arm wildly in the air toward the house, the tennis courts, the pool. “But it’s all up to me, isn’t it? Like it always is. ‘Don’t worry, Lil’? ‘Just relax, Lil’? Meanwhile these gonifs up in the Bronx are priming to bury our enterprise with their ‘super-premium ice cream’!”

  Grabbing my cane, I struggled to get up, yet my iron garden chair was impossible to maneuver. “Jesus Christ!” I hollered. “Do I have to do absolutely goddamn everything around here myself?”

  “Lil, p-p-p-p-p-p-please,” Bert begged, motioning. “I’m sorry. Sit down. I just want to have a nice lunch with my lovely wife, is all.” The pleading look he gave me was heartbreaking. Yet I was having none of it. His weakness, it could be so goddamn manipulative sometimes.

  “Sit down?” I bellowed. “Why are people always telling me to sit down? To relax? To take it easy? You think I’m some sort of pathetic invalid?”

  “N-n-n-n-,” Bert sputtered. Lurching halfway out of his seat, he grasped my hand desperately. His face contorted in pleading.

  “L-L-L-L-L-L-L-”

  “Bert, what are you doing?”

  Almost in slow motion, his mouth went slack, as if he’d been punched in the gut, and he keeled forward over the table, slamming down onto it hard, like a felled tree. His chin smashed flat into the remaining lump of Waldorf salad on his plate. His glasses flew off. Mayonnaise and blood splattered across his forehead, his shoulders. His wineglass slipped from his hand, shattering against the paving stones. His arm, it dangled at his side, swinging gently, indifferently, like a pendulum.

  “Bert!” I screamed.

  Overhead, the gulls circled lazily in the obliterating sun. The tablecloth continued to snap in the breeze. Everything else went quiet.

  Chapter 15

  So sue me: I spend a little too much time in the ladies’ room. In the stall on the end, the frosted, graffitied window can be opened about four inches. Miss Slocum paces outside like a sentry. “Mrs. Dunkle? Are you all right?” She knocks, even though I told her I just needed a moment to myself, thank you, and not to let anyone in. I wave in as much cool air as I can. I unwrap a Schrafft’s peppermint, blow my nose, study myself in my compact mirror, pushing the flesh on my face back like dough. Somewhere my youth is buried in there. Bert, I think. How I wish you were still here. On the back of the metal stall door, someone has written MARIO CUOMO IS A HOMO and SUGAR HILL GANG in purple marker amid a rain of misspellings. Beyond the window is a thin slice of river, the sound of an ambulance.

  “Don’t come in!” I holler.

  When she finally manages to coax me out, Miss Slocum informs me that we are now late. She hustles me into the courtroom just as the officer is bellowing, “All rise!” Though the room is nearly empty, the few people in it get to their feet. For a moment it appears that they are standing not for His Honor but for me. The judge, of course, is not pleased by this. I know that judges are supposed to be impartial, but trust me, darlings. There is a lot of ego under those black robes. Give any schmuck a gavel and he thinks he’s Earl Warren.

  “Counsel, are we having trouble telling time this morning?” the judge says dryly, pointing to his watch. From what I can tell, it’s a Timex. The remaining threads of his hair have been shellacked across his skull, and the fluorescent lights overhead reflect off his glasses, obscuring his eyes. Not the best look. The name plaque before him reads HON. LESTER KUKLINSKY. I stare straight at him and never once glance in the direction of the plaintiffs. The Newhouse family is all assembled, however, with their little angel in tow, of course. A fresh pillow of gauze is taped ostentatiously over her left eye, even though it’s been months. None of us are actually required to appear in person for the pretrial hearing, yet the Newhouses are no dummies. Showing up with their visual aid, decked out in her little puffed-sleeve dress and her Mary Janes, with her pigtails and her woeful lisp—they’re banking that the sight of her will score them big points with the judge. And so it’s best to counter this with me, my lawyers have decided, the Other Visual: a poor, sweet, crippled little old lady with her cane and her thick, dark glasses (suggesting, erroneously, cataracts). In short, it’s Granny versus the Moppet. Why we even bother to file a goddamn motion is beyond me. In the end, no matter what the court claims, we’re all going to be judged on gut reactions and appearances. People always are.

  Judge Kuklinsky is apparently the only person in the room not to have seen a television lately or to have prepared for our case ahead of time. “So what do we have here?” he says, perusing a piece of paper. The Newhouses’ lawyer, a pockmarked man in a double-breasted suit—his name is Mr. Tottle—and apparently, this Mr. Tottle has made quite a name for himself doing this sort of thing, the gonif—he clears his throat. I’m pleased to see the judge ignore him. I glance at Jason. He is sitting directly behind me in the visitors’ gallery, leaning forward with his chin resting on the rail as if he’s taking in a puppet show.

  “Sit up straight, please,” I tell him. “You’re in court.”

  He grins sheepishly.

  “And spit out that chewing gum,” I say more loudly, digging around in my purse for a tissue.

  “Lillian!” my lawyer shushes me.

  “Excuse me, is there a problem over there?” says the judge.

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor. I’m just reminding my grandson here to use good manners, is all,” I say in my most pearly, grandmotherly voice. I hand Jason a pink tissue. “Stop slouching, tateleh,” I whisper loudly. “Do you want your spine should stick like that? I’m sorry, Judge.” I face forward again and smile at him brightly. “That was for my grandson, of course, not you.”

  I see a faint smile play around the corners of Miss Slocum’s mouth. She’s no dummy after all, perhaps. She knows what I’m doing.

  “Ah,” Judge Kuklinsky says, glancing down at the paper, then over at me. “So. This is the ice cream lady?”

  I beam. “Yes I am, Your Honor. Little old me.” I smile winningly. “How do you do?”

  “I’m fine, thank you. But, Mrs. Dunkle, I’d like to point out that you have a lawyer. From now on, please refrain from speaking to the court directly. Anything you want to address you should communicate through your attorneys. Do you understand? Now.” He adjusts his glasses and returns
to the paper in front of him. “I see the plaintiffs have filed a complaint and the defense a motion to dismiss?”

  I turn to Miss Slocum. “He doesn’t like me,” I whisper. “I don’t want this judge. I want someone else. Get rid of him.”

  “What?” says Miss Slocum, her leather portfolio going heavy in her hand. “Mrs. Dunkle, you can’t choose your own judge.”

  “Ask him if he’s lactose-intolerant. Kuklinsky. That’s Polish. Or Jewish. Eastern Europeans have problems digesting dairy. Get him to recuse himself.”

  “I’m not asking the judge if he’s lactose-intolerant,” Miss Slocum says. “It’s absurd, and it’ll only piss him off. We need him to be as predisposed to you as possible.”

  “But he’s not,” I say. “Can’t you see? He’s already got it in for me.” Glancing at the judge, darlings, I just know. Behind the lozenges of his eyeglasses, he is calculating, fixing the case, compiling his own evidence and opinions against me. The way he said So. This is the ice cream lady?— His voice was like fat dripping off of a roast.

  “The judge’s diet is not an issue here,” Miss Slocum says. “And believe me, we shouldn’t make it one.”

  “What if I were a pig farmer but the judge kept kosher?” I say. “Please. You’re saying this wouldn’t be relevant? It wouldn’t influence him at all, not even unconsciously? What the hell am I paying you for?”

  “Excuse me, Counselor,” Judge Kuklinsky says, staring in our direction. “I hear a lot of whispering. Do we have a problem here?”

  “No,” Miss Slocum says, standing.

  “Yes,” I declare, hoisting myself to my feet with my cane. My whole life—the whole empire that Bert and I have built—whatever’s left of it—I will not have it ruined because some judge has an attitude, because some judge gets a stomachache every time he eats a goddamn cheese sandwich. I know what is going on here. You can’t tell me otherwise.

  “You have to—I want—” I announce. Suddenly the morning sun catches on a soda can that someone has left on the radiator by the window. The glare is like a flashbulb. I feel myself jerk back in reaction to it. Bright nets of light cast across the room, rippling like the bottom of a swimming pool. My legs, the polished floor of the courtroom, the judge’s bench, his chubby face—they are all abruptly turning to water. I am the water, and in the water, and under the water as well. It’s like Jason said: All of us are 50 percent water. Simple molecules of hydrogen and oxygen. Back when Bert was alive, he would help me into the pool in the summer and spin me around with my legs wrapped around his waist. I’d lie back, letting the water buoy me and splay out in glittering thrashes, and I’d feel like a mermaid in my swimming cap and my little two-piece with the starfish clasp. Not crippled at all.

  “Lillian?” Miss Slocum’s voice seems muted, even though it is laced with panic. “Are you all right?” She is gripping my arm, shaking it. I feel nothing. I am swirling in our bright turquoise pool, the sky overhead smeared with treetops. Oh, Bert. Somebody yanks off my sunglasses. The other lawyers’ faces press in around mine like grotesque carnival masks, anxious and staring. “Her pupils are dilated,” someone says. I open my mouth to speak, yet the words, they seem to evaporate. I am having trouble moving my jaw. “Is she having a stroke?” another says worriedly. Jason is in front of me now, his hands gripping my shoulders. “Grandma? Grandma? Are you okay?”

  I did not expect it would feel like this.

  The crackle of a walkie-talkie. The judge himself on his feet. A scraping of chairs: I am aware of this, yet only peripherally. The smell of the chlorine, the baked feel of the summer air, Bert’s silhouette above me, eclipsing the sun so that its rays seem to shoot out from behind him like a halo. Oh, it was all so magnificent! “STR,” someone says. “Isn’t that the acronym?”

  Then, as if a hypnotist has snapped his fingers, the sensation stops. The water instantly recedes. I find I can move my jaw again. “Mmmph,” I say, shaking out my waterlogged skull. I realize I am stifling a laugh. I stare at my hands. The backs of them are mapped with ropy, purplish veins. Astonishing, darlings. All at once, it seems terribly, terribly funny, though I have the idea that laughing is an unacceptable response right now—that if I do let loose with a cackle, it will negatively affect my case. And yet the laughter breaks over me, and I have to mask it with a fit of coughing, which comes out as a string of peculiar squeaks.

  “Mrs. Dunkle? Are you all right?” the judge asks.

  Just then a court officer approaches the bench from the side. She is an enormous Negro woman, stuffed into her uniform, with eyebrows that have been plucked off, then inked back in. I am amazed at the girth of her, the rolls of fat coddling her chin and her back, visible through her uniform. There must be a weight requirement for court officers, I decide. Like in boxing. She waddles over to Judge Kuklinsky and whispers something to him. He regards her doubtfully, then sighs.

  “Mrs. Dunkle, Counselor, would you both approach the bench, please?” he beckons.

  Miss Slocum puts her hand on the small of my back and guides me up.

  “Mrs. Dunkle?” Leaning over the bench, Judge Kuklinsky stares into my eyes, observing them, his pupils darting back and forth as if he were studying tiny words printed on the backs of my retinas. “Mrs. Dunkle,” he whispers carefully. “Are you by any chance stoned?”

  * * *

  “The Greatest Party That Never Was” made headlines across the nation. Barry Manilow was shown on the news, dressed in a white leisure suit, unfolding himself from a limousine outside the Breakers Hotel. “I was just heading to do a sound check when my manager called with the news,” he said, visibly shaken. “It’s just tragic. Albert Dunkle was the kindest, nicest man imaginable.” Dionne Warwick pushed past the cameras at the West Palm Beach airport, in tears, murmuring, “Please. Not now.”

  “America lost its favorite ice cream man this evening,” Walter Cronkite announced on the CBS Evening News. “Albert Dunkle arrived in America a penniless thirteen-year-old boy. After opening the first Dunkle’s Ice Cream stand on a roadside during the Great Depression, he went on to invent a soft ice cream machine and a ‘secret ice cream formula’ that revolutionized the industry. He also devised today’s modern franchise model—building a veritable empire of ice cream.” A quick montage showed Bert waving from a Dunkle’s Ice Cream truck. Bert presenting a laughing President Ford with a special tub of Banana Peel ice cream. A black-and-white still from Life of Bert and me arriving at a March of Dimes banquet, him in a tuxedo, me in a sequined gown.

  “Although he is perhaps best known as the ice cream genius behind Spreckles the Clown, Nilla Rilla, and Chocohontas, as well as countless ice cream cakes and whimsical trademark flavors,” news anchor John Chancellor said on NBC, “Albert Dunkle was also a great philanthropist. During World War II, he insisted on supplying American troops with ice cream for mere pennies on the dollar. And during the fifties—inspired by his polio-stricken wife, Lillian—he personally enlisted his trucks and franchises to distribute the Salk vaccine.”

  The White House sent condolences. The New York Times called. At Bella Flora, the staff got busy with ladders, hastily removing the gigantic gold-and-white banner garlanding the entranceway: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALBERT!

  For me, nothing registered. All of it was a smear. Bert’s friends and associates, in their plaid golf pants and Hawaiian shirts, paced the rooms at Bella Flora well into the night, all of them on the telephone, in the kitchen, our study. Isaac was stony-faced, doubled over beside me on the love seat in my bedroom. Then he was gone. Then he was back with a glass of water. Or was it gin? I glimpsed Edgar, our lawyer, half eclipsed within a hive of men, scribbling frantically on a yellow legal pad. Striding over, his face a mask of concern, he planted his damp palm on my convulsing shoulder. “Don’t worry, Lil,” he whispered. “I’m taking care of everything.”

  I was aware only of a horrific, otherworldly animal keening coming from somewhere, Berrrrrrt! Berrrrt! Obliterating all other sounds, this anguished female h
owling would not stop; as soon as it seemed to subside, it restarted again, as relentless as the tide thrashing in a storm, until, at some point, my throat felt scorched and a voice from somewhere pleaded, “Will somebody get her a pill already?”

  Back in New York, flowers and fruit baskets awaited. Cornucopias of delicacies from Zabar’s and Bloomingdale’s. What the hell was I supposed to do with two pounds of cheddar-wine cheese spread? Place it on the side of the bed where my Bert used to sleep? (And why did no one but Harvey Ballentine have the good sense to send liquor?) At Riverside Memorial the crowds parted around me. Jason escorted me carefully through the foyer, his young hand firm on my elbow. All those who were supposed to be celebrating Bert’s birthday down in Palm Beach were shaking out their umbrellas, stomping their wet feet on the rubber mats laid out by the chapel. Somberly, they signed the guest book, then milled about in their coal-black suits gripping my forearm, telling me how sorry they were, how great Bert was. They fixed me in a gaze of pity and bathos for a moment before checking their watches and ducking out to the pay phones. Businessmen. Me, I wore Bert’s terry-cloth sports headband wrapped around my wrist like a tourniquet. From the moment the ambulance arrived, I refused to remove it. I was vaguely aware that I was heavily medicated. I kept offering up my quivering arm, showing it to anyone who would look. “This was the last thing he wore,” I rasped. “You see this spot? That’s him. My Bert. His perspiration. You see that?”

  Weeks after the funeral, I limped through the empty apartment every night weeping. Oh, Bert, where are you? Every time I heard the scrape of the elevator arriving in the foyer, I turned instinctively, expecting him to be returning from a round of golf, from dinner with the dairy men at Peter Luger’s. When I put on a dress, I stood before the mirror with my head bowed, my neck exposed, waiting, until I realized that Bert would never emerge from the bathroom in his robe to help me with my zipper. The loss, over and over, caught me like sniper fire. Like a spooked horse kicking me in the gut. Oh, Bert. My knees buckled. I wailed like a child in the hospital.