The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street: A Novel

by Susan Jane Gilman

  “Ma. You’re still the president. Nobody can take this away from you. But how much longer can you keep doing this? You’re seventy-four now. It’s nuts. It’s taking its toll. And let’s be honest. You’re drinking too much.” He tried to look sympathetic. “It’s time to pass along the torch.”

  “Pass along the torch?” The wallop felt sonic. The company had been mine to give him. My legacy. Why couldn’t he have let me bequeath it? Why couldn’t he have afforded me that one parental pleasure? For once in my life, I could have been noble, a munificent mother. But he’d begrudged me even this, Isaac. Charging ahead and helping himself. “Do you know how hard I’ve worked to preserve and protect this for you?” I cried. “And you just go ahead and steal it?”

  “Ma, please. I didn’t steal anything. You know Pop never put anything in writing. There was no formal agreement. But the setup we had? Surely you could see it wasn’t working. Those Milk Shake-Ups were a disaster.”

  “Because you never listen to me! You ignore me, steal from me, then toss me out in the trash!”

  Isaac stood up. “No one’s discarding you, Ma,” he said with fatigue. “You’re still the Ice Cream Queen of America. And now that we’ve pulled Shake-Ups off the market, it’s going to be you, in fact, who can convince America to come back to Dunkle’s.” He attempted a weak smile. “After all. Who can say no to you?”

  All the viewers saw was me, Lillian Dunkle, in my wretched signature housedress. I brought a milk shake to my lips, took a sip, made a face, and dumped it out. Spreckles—some generic actor the director had cast—appeared beside me, holding two classic Dunkle’s ice cream cones. Vanilla and chocolate swirl. Wordlessly, Spreckles handed one to me, and we began to eat. Slowly, we started to smile. Only then did I look directly into the camera and say, “Mm. That’s so much better, isn’t it?”

  I leaned in. Recently Dunkle’s tried something a little different. (I shrugged.) So sue us: it didn’t work. But I’m a mother. So I know from experience. Everyone makes a mistake sometimes. But life—and ice cream—goes on, darlings. So please, come back to Dunkle’s. Our famous soft-serve ice cream is still the same delicious frozen treat America has known for over forty-five years. And to welcome you back, we’re offering our legendary, two-for-the-price-of-one ice cream sundaes all month. (I took another big bite of my ice cream cone.) Because forgiveness, darlings…(I smiled)…should always taste sweet.

  Oh, how I hated this hideous public debasement! Every word in my mouth was a knot of barbed wire. And somewhere, somewhere out in Brooklyn and Mineola, I was certain the Dinello brothers and their cronies were toasting each other with Spumante. Grinning. Throwing balled-up tinfoil at the television screen and hooting derisively. I would have refused to do the commercial entirely if I hadn’t unwittingly signed a contract agreeing to it the year before—a contract that Isaac had designed to ostensibly “protect and secure” my position as “spokeswoman and president” of the company.

  Forgiveness? What the hell did I have to apologize for, I wanted to know?

  “Prodigal Dunkle’s,” the Reverend Elkson called us in the media. “Lillian,” he said when he telephoned me personally, “I cannot tell you how glad it makes my heart and how much it pleases our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that you have seen the error of your ways. ‘I was blind, but now I see,’ eh? What can I say, Lillian, except that your apology on national television has taught America’s children a valuable lesson in humility and redemption—and about what happens when you turn away from sin toward the light of God’s love. Any Sunday at all, I invite you to come down to my church in Colorado Springs as our special, honored guest—”

  I slammed down the receiver. Sundays I had my own TV show, thank you very much. And he knew it. Oh, the audacity!

  Yes, the protesters packed up their signs and their lawn chairs and their Styrofoam picnic coolers and their JESUS LOVES YOU beach balls and stuffed them back into the trunks of their Ford Fiestas. Yes, the rumors subsided, customers began to return. A sprinkle-covered “Dunkle’s Kiddie Kone” was even introduced, which helped our sales for the first quarter in a year. Yet only modestly. And I was not surprised. Contrition and spinelessness are never good business strategies. Nobody likes weakness. “We’re sorry” is not a marketing tool.

  Isaac, from what I heard through my grandson, was sweating to develop a “Deluxe Premium Dunkle’s” ice cream to compete directly with Umlaut. It would apparently be made without the use of Bert’s patented machines at all, in “exclusive” small batches in flavors such as Chocolate Truffle, Madagascar Vanilla, Java with Cream—whatever the hell that was. Sixteen percent butterfat. Little overrun. Well, good luck to him.

  But I knew: The damage had already been done.

  Chapter 17

  My pulmonary cardiologist said fresh air and greenery would do me some good. That’s what they always say when they don’t know what the hell else to tell you. “You’re in excellent shape for someone your age,” he said, glancing furtively at my leg. “Frankly, I can’t find anything the matter with you.”

  “Then why is my heart always racing? Why do I feel breathless and shaky for no good, goddamn reason at all?”

  “You just need to relax,” my doctor said, clipping his pen back into his pocket.

  “I ‘need to relax’? What kind of meshuggeneh advice is that? Obviously, if I could goddamn relax, I would relax already.”

  Besides, I was barely even working! Each month, all I did was endure an elaborate charade in the office orchestrated by Isaac: I arrived at Dunkle’s headquarters like some grand dowager. Isaac gallantly pulled out a chair for me at the head of a conference table shaped like a tongue depressor. “Mrs. Dunkle, would you like some tea?” his secretary said, hovering with a tin of Danish butter cookies that nobody bothered to open. The ostensible point of this ritual was to keep me “apprised.” Everyone—the accountants, the marketing division, and so forth—spoke to me in overly loud, solicitous tones, as if I were some sort of deaf, idiot child. Whenever I cleared my throat to speak—to question certain expenditures or marketing decisions—the room went deathly quiet and everyone’s glances careened off each other like billiard balls. Of course, Mrs. Dunkle, they said, nodding and smiling indulgently. Well, absolutely. We’ll consider that.

  I don’t know who the hell they thought they were kidding.

  Oh, there were foundation meetings and charity luncheons to occupy me. Museum galas where all the guests left their salads untouched and sipped uriney chardonnay while security guards stood discreetly on the peripheries and Mayor Koch moved from table to table like a gadfly. Whenever I could, I brought Petunia in my handbag and fed her bits of the seeded rolls during the speeches. (“Oh, aren’t you clever,” Brooke Astor once whispered to me across the table. “Next time I’m bringing my parakeet.”)

  Besides the odd, dutiful visit from my grandson, mostly all I looked forward to was hosting Dunkle’s Sundae Morning Funhouse. My show had been on the air for twenty-three years now, though for the 1982 fall season it had been reduced to two hours instead of three. That mamzer Reverend Elkson and his New Christian Old-Time Gospel Club had gobbled up most of the Sunday-morning time slots across the nation. Dunkle’s Sundae Morning Funhouse was airing on only eleven local stations outside New York City now. Come 1983 we would also stop airing live entirely, I was informed. The show would be videotaped like most other programs. “No one will have to be up at the crack of dawn on Sundays anymore,” my producer enthused. But I knew a money saver when I saw it.

  I love live television, darlings, which is why I insisted on it for so long. A live television show frees you of all self-consciousness. You simply have to perform on the spot—and that is that. And it has all the energy of the streets!

  Until we made the switch to tape, however, I arrived at the studio on Sundays at 6:00 A.M. as always, with my hair and makeup already fixed the way I liked them, my wardrobe pressed (I’d switched to colorful Bill Blass pantsuits to keep up with the times),
and hair spray, arthritis medicine, and an empty Geritol bottle filled with vodka tucked neatly into my pocketbook. Vodka has never been my drink of choice, yet it is odorless. And I am nothing, darlings, if not professional.

  Yet before the children started filing in from the green room one Sunday, Elliot Paulson, my producer, summoned me to his office upstairs. This was highly unusual, and I knew it could not be good. I took several quick sips from my Geritol bottle, tapped two drops of Binaca Gold onto my tongue, and tugged at the hem of my jacket to right it. I kept Elliot waiting an extra ten minutes, however. People should always be reminded of who the star is.

  “Lillian,” Elliot said with oversize magnanimity. His office felt like a bunker. All the furniture was half collapsed, cluttered with folders, scripts, newspapers. A large bulletin board extended the chaos onto the wall. Fifty-seven years old my producer was, yet he had souvenir shot glasses, snow globes, and all of those new Star Wars figurines little boys are so mad about arrayed on his desk. Who the hell could work like that?

  A Styrofoam cup of ice water had already been poured for me and a big, padded swivel chair rolled in from another office. This was ominous. I wished I had brought my pocketbook. Elliot smiled nervously. His assistant, some foppish boy with a skinny satin necktie, hovered, clutching a manila folder.

  “Can I get you something other than water, Lillian? Coffee? Perrier?”

  “Please. Spare me the chitchat.” I set aside the glass of water decisively. The vodka was not doing its job. “What is the trouble, Elliot?”

  “Trouble?” Elliot picked up a miniature model of a triangular spacecraft and fidgeted with it absentmindedly. Jason, I recalled, used to have one just like it. That friend of his, that kid Bodhisattva Rosenblatt, he’d had a Star Wars–themed bar mitzvah.

  “I just figured that since the holidays are coming up, we could take a few minutes to discuss the revamp. For the switch to videotape.”

  I reached for the glass of water and took a large gulp. It went down poorly, and I had to pound myself on the base of my throat. “All right,” I said, not disagreeably. Certainly I, of all people, appreciated the need to innovate. “I’ve had several ideas myself, you know.” Which was true, darlings. Now that I’d had more time on my hands. “For example, I’d like to change the name from Funhouse to Clubhouse. That strikes me as so much more modern.”

  Elliot jutted his lip. “Not bad,” he said with equanimity. Grabbing a pad from beneath the pile on his desk, he scribbled it down.

  “Speaking of ‘more modern,’ Lillian.” He exhaled. “We’re thinking— Well, the higher-ups are saying, actually—it wasn’t my idea at all, I can assure you—but the decision has been made that the host of the Funhouse, she should have a fresher look, too.”

  I stared at him. Something inside me clicked. It only took a second. I supposed I had been anticipating this. “Oh, you little bastards,” I said. “I have a contract, you know.”

  “Of course you do. Of course you do, Lillian. And we get that. You’re still the Ice Cream Queen. Nobody can replace you.” Elliot held up both his hands as if to stop traffic. “It’s for precisely this reason that the suits upstairs want you to have a new cohost. The Ice Cream Princess. Someone young. A professional actress. Cool, upbeat—who the kids can relate to more. This way when you retire, the children will already know and love her. We won’t lose any more market share.”

  “Who the hell said anything about retiring?”

  “C’mon, Lillian. You’re what now? Seventy-four? Five? How much longer can you keep doing this?”

  “Oh, and you think some little teenage dingbat is going to have an easier time than me?” I thumped my cane hard on the floor. “I am a workhorse.”

  “Of course you are, Lillian. Hell, I don’t have half the energy you do. But the plain truth is, in this industry?” Elliot pointed to himself helplessly. “Hell, I’m a dinosaur! Especially now, with this new MTV? And cable? An old lady doing some Catskills shtick is just not what nine-year-olds want to watch on Sunday mornings anymore. We’ve done the research.” Digging a report out of the landslide of paper on his desk, he tossed it toward me. “See for yourself.”

  I jerked my head to one side. “We still have ninety-eight franchises nationwide! The revenue we bring NBC— Since 1954—”

  Elliot nodded emphatically. “Which is why you get to help choose your successor. Build your legacy. Look, we’ve put out some casting calls. There are some really bright, mediagenic girls out there.”

  His assistant leaned over silkily with a stack of head shots. “We’ve got Heather here. And Samantha. Aimee—”

  I knocked them out of his hands. A dozen eight-by-ten glossy photos fluttered to the carpet around me, all of them beautiful teenage girls with long, shiny hair and whitewashed smiles gazing brightly toward some fixed point in the future. And you could bet: Not one of them had a limp.

  Back in my dressing room, I poured myself one capful of vodka, then another. My entire central nervous system felt dilated. We were on the air in thirty minutes. Elliot was no dummy. He was a weak, childish man. As such he was extremely adept at evasive maneuvers. For all I knew, he had been sitting on this news for months, dillydallying, screen-testing beautiful young girls, patting his mouth with a handkerchief as they glided in and out of the audition studio smelling of baby powder and strawberry lip gloss. Elliot, playing with his Star Wars toys, letting his idiot snow globes rain chemical flakes on tiny plastic Key Wests and Las Vegases, all the while rationalizing that the time simply wasn’t right yet to inform me. If I knew Elliot—and I did, darlings—the “right time,” of course, meant precisely this—thirty minutes before we went on the air live—when I would be unwilling to raise a ruckus. Elliot was banking on my professionalism, even as he treated me like a child. His gutlessness was appalling. Idiots, idiots everywhere! I was so goddamn sick and tired of it! I swallowed another capful of vodka.

  Oh, how I wished Bert were here! I suddenly missed him with such force that my grief felt violent. Mama. Papa. Flora. Rose. Bella. Mr. and Mrs. Dinello. Orson Maytree Jr. Mrs. Preminger. Edgar. Harvey Ballentine, who had quit so abruptly, with barely a good-bye, and not even so much as a Christmas card since. And Bert. My Bert. Thinking of him lying beside me with his chest pressed against my back, his right hand curved around my bosoms, his scratchy chin propped on my neck as he looked at the book I was reading aloud to him, his eyes following the words he could not decipher, the two of us breathing in unison on the narrow bed on Thompson Street beneath the hissing electric light, the speckled blue enamel teakettle heating slowly on the little stove across from us—the two of us so young, so full of wonder.

  A strangled sound came from deep within me. My heart, it felt as if it were a sponge that Bert himself was wringing dry of all its blood. I clutched my abdomen. Petunia leaped up onto my lap from her little satin pillow in the corner. Drawing her to me, my own craggy hands were unrecognizable to me. My skin looked like runny chocolate-chip ice cream dripping from my bones. As soon as my fingers stopped shaking, I drank another capful of vodka.

  From the corridor the PA knocked on my door. “Five minutes!” she shouted.

  In the wings just beyond the set, the wardrobe assistant draped my fake fur cape around my shoulders and fastened it with its oversize chain. She righted my plastic ice cream crown with its plastic sundae on top. The soon-to-be-retired theme song, with its cheerful calliope music, had already begun to play, grinding through the studio at a deafening volume. It was Spreckles who opened the show now, singing:

  Children across America—

  Come to our Funhouse ’n’ play!

  Ice cream, you scream—

  Who’s screaming here today?

  This newest Spreckles had been hired by Personnel at NBC—without their consulting me at all, of course, thank you. Yet another snub. A “professional clown,” this one was. Some actor named Jared. A Buddhist. So you could only imagine. As he sang, he pogoed along the edge of the stage, waving at
the children with grotesque enthusiasm, his arms scissoring the air back and forth, as if he were attempting to flag down a helicopter. “C’mon, boys and girls!” he prompted. The whole audience began waving in unison. “Do you like ice cream! Do you want to have fun and win prizes this morning?”

  “YES!” the children chorused.

  “Then wave!”

  That’s it. Wave, you pampered little bastards, I thought as I wobbled toward the curtain. Why, this is probably how the Hitler Youth started. Here, have a treat. Now, march. Look at them, these tiny puppets, dressed in their miniature Levi’s. Plaid shirts. Corduroy dresses. Their shellacked Lender’s Bagel necklaces hung proudly from their slender necks, all of them groomed for the camera by frantic mothers kneeling before them, spitting into a Kleenex to rub jelly crust off their cheeks at the very last minute. These small, privileged moppets, who had never had to lug a pail of coal or stitch lace in a dimly lit, tubercular factory or bathe in frigid water in a zinc tub in a kitchen plagued by rats. These “youngsters,” with their plastic pencil cases and their crayon-colored backpacks, who ate processed supermarket foods molded especially for them into alphabet letters and precious animal shapes. They had received more doting love and attention from their parents this morning in the green room than I had ever received in my entire goddamn seventy-four years.

  Finally the theme song gave way to a drum roll. All the lights went off as DUNKLE’S FUNHOUSE was illuminated above the stage, glittering crazily in large flashing pink, white, and gold bulbs, and a spotlight landed on the satin curtain, and Don Pardo announced as he had for twenty-three years, Good morning, boys and girls! Welcome to the Dunkle’s Sundae Morning Funhouse, live from NBC Studios in New York City. Please welcome your hostess, Mrs. Lillian Dunkle, the Ice Cream Queen of America! As the applause sign flashed insanely overhead, the children became crazed with excitement, shrieking, jumping up and down, waving, hooting with anticipation and fanatical glee, and for one moment I might as well have been Benny Goodman and Frank Sinatra, darlings. I might as well have been Elvis and the Beatles. Take that, Elliot, you cocksucker, I thought. Don’t you dare tell me children are not interested in watching me.