by Peter Orner
“Chased from Shershov, we were chased—”
“Chased, fled, same difference.”
“Never us! And not from here. Not these Jews. Kaplans stay in Fall River.”
16
Dumb Luck, Brief Treatise
The headline on the left side of the front page of the Fall River Herald News on the day it also published Max Kaplan’s obituary, April 7, 1958, was as follows:
GIGOLO NOT UNWELCOME SUITOR, LANA ADMITS
The paper’s been in the top drawer of the desk in his study for nearly two decades. Every once in a while, Walt unfolds the yellowed paper and rereads his father’s obituary, as well as the details of Lana Turner’s affair with a B-level mobster named Johnny Stompanato. Never mind that he was stabbed by Lana’s daughter for beating up Lana. Which goes to show you, he thinks. Goes to show you what exactly? he asks.
It goes to show you. Period.
What do you mean?
Why do I got to spell everything out even to myself?
Funeral services were held this morning for Maxwell Kaplan of 81 Dudley Street, this city, at Temple Beth El, 385 High Street, with Rabbi Samuel R. Ruderman eulogizing, assisted by cantors Marcus Gerlich and Moses Schwimmer. Bearers were attorney Everett Dashoff, Luis T. Ravosky, Simon Gourse, Dr. Daniel Weinstein, and Walter H. Kaplan. Internment was at Beth El Cemetery, North Main Street. For many years Mr. Kaplan was the proprietor of a furniture store bearing the family name, Kaplan’s Furniture at Pleasant and Fourth Street, Fall River.
Take your last breath, you might as well enjoy it, because somewhere some small-time, undeserving hood is making it with Lana Turner. Happy now? There it is.
Thank you, Walt.
You’re welcome, Walt.
17
The Woman at the Alhambra
It’s not as though it was foreordained. There was a time when he could have left. Why didn’t he, even if only for a few years? Why didn’t he run from Fall River when he had the chance after his father died? Sell the store and go while he still had stamina enough to get a little distance between him and here? At least he could have made it to Boston. Now only fifty-five minutes away with no traffic at sixty miles an hour on the fucking new highway. Back then it might have taken an hour and a half on Route 6. Think of the libraries, the bookstores, the brains! A man with a wife and daughter running away? But a man can have a wife and daughter anywhere. And Sarah would’ve left; she’d have come with him. She’d have missed her sisters, her friends, but she’d have left; she’d have packed up the house and…but hadn’t he realized long ago that you could run away without running? That you could stay put in a place you loved and still be gone? And yet. How was it possible he’d die before seeing China? Or Egypt? But wait, he had seen Egypt. They’d gone to Cairo in ’63 with Milt and Pearl. They saw the pyramids. Interesting architecture, amazing what you can do with slave labor. And Spain. They’d gone to Spain, too. In the ’60s, when they had some money, they went all over Europe one summer. Was that trip before or after Egypt? All he remembers of the Alhambra is that a Russian countess accidentally stepped on his foot. He was walking up a staircase—beautiful, the railing was also a waterfall—and this woman with a great kremlin of gleaming hair was walking down it. She’d stomped a high heel so hard on his left foot he’d let out a yowl. She apologized so elegantly in Russian-inflected English that Sarah said she must have been exiled aristocracy. They had been places, though that still left China. And what about India? Brazil? When are we going to have enough dough to fly down to Brazil, Sarah? Home. Run away, you end up carrying it with you, right? Stay put and your load’s lighter? Banishment without the banishment?
18
His Mother
Mother, mother, mother! Walt could no longer conjure her face or her body. He could no longer hear her voice, and he told himself (lied) that this was because she was too much a part of him to be remembered as a distinct person separate from himself, body and soul. The fact was in all those years he’d rarely looked at her. And if he’d listened, his ears would have told him she was saying something he already knew. So why tune in? She’d hovered on the edge of his life like a hummingbird, in the background of every scene, darting in and out of rooms, handing him a tart, an umbrella, mittens. He remembers her buttoning his loden coat, her fingers pulling the little horns through the buttonholes. His mother’s short, bony fingers like the little half pencils you get at the library. How is it possible that he knows not a thing about her? What was Molly Kaplan’s favorite color? Did she believe in God? She had, didn’t she, a narrow face? Like somebody had pushed her ears together a bit too much? A face people called dignified. Nobody ever called his mother pretty. She wore her hair pulled back so tightly on her head that it must have felt like someone or something was forever tugging on her scalp. She was afraid of flies. They didn’t annoy her, they terrified her. When one landed on a table, she didn’t scream. She stared at it, bug-eyed. She called him Walter, and she’d say it with two distinct syllables: Wal. Ter. As if she were still practicing her English. She was the only person who ever called him by his given name, which added to the sense that, for her, he was someone he never was. Walter? Who’s Walter?
19
Beth El Temple Notes,
October 8, 1939
(copy saved in Walt’s desk drawer)
Miss Frieda Posniak is recovering from an appendectomy at Union Hospital. Sumner Levine, son of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Levine, again distinguished himself by winning second prize in the state finals of the American Legion Oratorical contest held in Concord last week…The Shining Hour will be presented by the Women’s Players on Thursday evening, November 16, in the women’s club. Mr. Lester Ravosky is the director and the cast includes Miss Anita Chaveson, Mrs. Alfred Dolinsky, and Mrs. Toby Finklestein. Wardrobe and set design by Mrs. Walter Kaplan. We are proud of the selection, by the Fall River Council of the Boy Scouts of America, of Alfred Sherwin, for the Silver Beaver Award, one of the highest awards in the field of scouting…One of our own YPC members, Miss Jeanne Lifrak, had the distinction of meeting Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt while she was in Fall River last Sunday. Mrs. Roosevelt visited with Mrs. R. Howe, who resides next door to our temple…Many items of clothing have been left in the temple by the children from time to time. These items should be claimed at once or they will be given away…Next Friday evening Rabbi Ruderman will present the lecture “Moral Leprosy: What’s wrong with American Marriage”…Remember Friday night is temple night!!! But please do remain until the close of the service and discourage others from promenading about.
20
Miriam’s Egg Experiment
In 1942—was it spring? was the light coming into the kitchen through the northeast window?—Miriam dropped an egg on the kitchen floor and it didn’t break. This was curious, so she did it again, dropping said egg on purpose this time from roughly the same altitude above the counter. Impossible for Walt to explain why it broke the second time and not the first.
Still, he tried: “Things break only when you don’t mean them to?”
21
His Scar
Running into the house on Delcar one day in ’51 (’52? ’53?), Walt Kaplan tripped on one of his own front steps. Gash in the dent between his lip and his chin required stitches. For years he could still feel the scar. But what was the hurry? What was it he wanted to tell Sarah?
22
To the Dark
You give me a quiet house, a sleeping daughter, a sleeping wife, and I’ll show you what it is to be alive. I, Walt Kaplan, thought this not once but throughout my life, and often narrated it—buttery sentimentality be damned—to the dark, to the walls, to the carpet on the stairs that already needed to be replaced, to the sink in the bathroom when I got up to take yet another leak, to the glass of water that smelled of sulfur, to the throat that accepted the water, to the urinary tract that would soon expel said water. You give me a quiet house, a sleeping daughter, a sleeping wife, and I’ll—
23
>
Kaplan’s Furniture,
Fourth and Pleasant Street,
March 1961
Was that the afternoon Walt Kaplan sat at his desk on the mezzanine level of the store and contemplated his hands? They were the hands of a man who talked for a living. Soft, stumpy hands, unburdened hands, that in the night would often bridge that so-easily-conquerable divide between two separate beds, that come-on-over, that Maginot Line of love—a voice, either his or hers, You wanna? Two beds as an abstraction, a horizon, two beds as Jerusalem, Shangri-la, Oz. Atlantic City.
Now, a philosophical as well as a practical question: Why didn’t we just push the beds together and leave them there? Ah, because that would be a lie, no? The nature of the reaching, the nature of the whispered entreaties, a thousand variations on the same invitation, is that both the reaching of the hands and the question in question invariably lead to moments of complete incompleteness. Because the upshot of coupling is uncoupling. The essence of association is disassociation. Because you can fuck till you’re blue, but at a certain point the inevitable nightly drawing apart happens for good, am I right or am I right? Spell it out again: the retreat once again to separate beds attains a cementation that precludes any further you wannas. After a certain point you wanna? is no longer an invitation for rumpus; it’s a cry from oblivion. And who’s going to warn you? Who’s going to say, This, Walt, this is the last time you’ll touch Sarah Kaplan, née Gottlieb?
24
Moonlight
Biltmore Hotel, Providence, Rhode Island, June 18, 1934, Sarah conked out, mouth open, breathing heavy, nearly a pant but measured, followed closely by a slow, watery snore. Walt Kaplan watches her in the moonlight. There is no moonlight. It’s the light from the hall. It doesn’t reach her face. But in memory, it’s moonlight, and it’s on Sarah’s face.
25
Walt’s Spending Diary,
March 15, 1978
Two toothbrushes for Sarah at Peoples (no rubber tips).
$3.00 + 7 cents sales tax. Total: $3.07.
26
The Life Jacket
When Walt Kaplan was six, Max took him to see a traveling display of a life jacket salvaged from the Lusitania. His first memory. Whether remembered or instilled in him by repetition of the story, he’ll never know. Nobody alive any longer to ask. The life jacket, pale and torn, was housed in a glass box in the library at the Quequechan Club. Not every day they let Jews in the door of the Quequechan. This was a special occasion. Though the war was over, his father, enraged, shook his little fist at the relic in the glass box. Walt only wondered out loud what it would be like to float out there in that jacket, horizon in every direction.
27
Statistics
THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS
Division of Vital Statistics
Medical Examiner’s
Certificate of Death
1. Place of Death:
County
Bristol
City or Town
Fall River
Precise Location
Truesdale Hospital
2. Legal name, address, and other particulars:
(a) Full name (no nicknames): Walter Hyman Kaplan
(b) Birth date: Feb 2, 1919
(c) Place of birth: Fall River, Mass.
(d) Permanent residence: 100 Delcar Street, Fall River, Mass.
(e) Was deceased a U.S. war veteran? If yes, specify what war: No
(f) Sex: Male
(g) Color: White
(h) Age (be exact): 59 years 1 month 16 days
(i) Single, Married, Divorced, Unknown? (write the word): Married
(j) If married, state wife’s or husband’s name (give maiden name of wife): Sarah Gottlieb
(k) Usual occupation (kind of work done during most of life): Sales
(l) If applicable, state the name of current employer: I. Pincus and Co./Popular Furniture
(m) Name and birthplace of father: Max Kaplan, Russia
(n) Maiden name and birthplace of mother: Molly Winograd, Russia
3. Date of Death: March 16, 1978
4. I hereby certify that I have investigated the death of the person above-named and that the CAUSE and MANNER thereof are as follows (If an injury was involved, state fully):
Acute myocardial infarction/dead on arrival
Date: March 18, 1978
28
Beth El
Milt Feldman ambles over and rests a small, hairy paw on Alf Dolinsky’s shoulder. One man’s demise brings a little swing to another’s step. For a moment Alf looks at Milt’s hand and considers taking a bite out of it.
“Not a striver,” Milt says. “No, he wasn’t a striver. But as good a man as ever wore a suit. Look at this horde. You’d think the rabbi was handing out cash. I just saw Hildegard, you know the meter maid? The one with the crooked face? Crash your car into a phone pole, your head bleeding, she’d give you a ticket for blocking the intersection? She’s decked out in black. Wet eyes on that crone. I’m not kidding.”
“The meter maid’s name is Hildegard?”
“Call the bitch whatever you want. I parked all the way on Robeson. Had I known she’d…But I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised, I mean if ever a man—”
“Et tu?”
“What?”
“You also, Milt? I mean, you also.”
“You parked on Robeson, too?”
“The beautification. The man’s been dead six minutes and even Broom-Hilda, the meter maid—”
Milt releases Alf’s shoulder and leans in close. “I gotta get a seat. Place is mobbed.”
Mid-March and there’s a slow, cold rain. There are a few early leaves on the trees. To Alf, the rain hitting the leaves, blam, blam, sounds like pistol shots. He stands on the sidewalk and watches a straggler, a man he doesn’t recognize, holding a newspaper over his head as he hurries inside before Alf, too, ascends the temple steps. People do love a dead guy. It’s living people everybody’s got such trouble with. In death, even with the biggest jackass in town, it’s all about rest his generous soul in peace. But with Walt, it’s no bullshit. They’re not hamming it up. People aren’t taking a day off work out of obligation. They’re here because they want to do something with how they feel, and nobody’s ever been able to come up with anything better than this phony holiday we call a funeral.
Alf stands in the back of the sanctuary, his back to the open door and the rain. Latecomers are still nudging past knees to get to the empty seats in the middle of the rows. Why do people who come on time always sit on the edges? To rub it in? Alf looks at the tall glass windows, huddled figures in robes. Why does everybody in the Bible always wear robes? Doesn’t seem that pragmatic. Think of the sand up your crotch. The windows are supposed to represent the twelve tribes of Israel. Why tribes? Didn’t Walt have some bit about the twelve tribes? Alf’s never been able to concentrate in this building. But what are people supposed to concentrate on? Faith? Alf never had any. Immortality? Not interested. Sell that to somebody else. My feet hurt. Were Jews ever promised immortality, or did Christ bring that to the table? Cheat the grave? Walt would know. The first of how many things I don’t need to know he’ll never tell me.
Rabbi Ruderman intones, drones, moans. Thou art God. Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday…A woman rises, half stands in one of the rows closest to the casket. It’s Ruthie. Soundlessly she mouths, Saved you a seat. Alf shakes his head. He’s okay where he is. Next to him is Fischer, the real master of ceremonies here. But Fischer is gracious. He cedes a little time for the rabbi to recite his mumbo jumbo and then a few too many words about what a great all-around guy—
But this is Fischer’s death, Fischer’s body up there at the front housed in wood. Alf sneaks a look at the funeral director. He’s gaunt. Skin hangs down his face like melted cheese. Probably starves himself to look the part. Because if ever a man was in the growth business. As the
rabbi forges on with the preliminaries, this death merchant calmly rubs together the hands that protrude from a suit jacket with too-short sleeves.
Mortality for profit? Every corpse lines the pocket? Should be a public utility, like the phone company, like the library. Walt would get a kick out of the suggest—
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday.
At breakfast when he’d complained about having to attend this farce, Ruthie said, “It’s a ritual, you’re supposed to suffer through it. That’s why rituals got invented. You think if they were fun we’d do them over and over?”
They should make Ruthie the rabbi.
Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep.
Alf can’t take it anymore and retreats back into the rain. A big man, he walks daintily, on weakened knees, down the wet granite steps. Fall River granite, Walt would say, quarried from our own rock-hard soil by the sweat of hearty, singing Irishmen. Two of Fischer’s men stand in the street by the open door of the hearse. Guy drives Connies his whole life, they’re going to stuff him in a Cadillac for his last ride? Insults upon insults.