Now he turned to me. ‘Are you planning on staying at Lane for the entire four years?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
‘Well, then, take my advice. When you’re in your senior year, if you ever get there, file an application with the Sanitation Department and get yourself a job on a garbage wagon.’
No, I couldn’t tell my mother that. I never did. But I knew then that I was not going to become an architect. It would have to be something else, but I didn’t know what and I don’t suppose it really mattered.
Chapter Ten
I WAS NOT quite fourteen when I entered Lane and I still outclassed other freshmen when it came to height. I must have been close to six feet tall. But now I wore long trousers that made life a bit easier for me. I had made friends. I had joined a club of boys and girls in the neighbourhood, and I had discovered girls’ legs and knees. Skirts were getting shorter. I went to parties and played a game called ‘spin the bottle’, which sent me into a dark room to kiss some sweaty giggling girl. I was very busy with my schoolwork and my social life, but not too busy and not yet too old to be going places with my mother, to visit relatives mostly, and to help carry Sidney, who was now well able to walk but preferred to be carried. There were some occasions when my father and my two brothers went along with us.
This would be the times when we all needed haircuts and it would be to visit Aunt Sophie, whose husband Sam was a barber and a good-natured man who didn’t mind devoting his weekend to cutting hair for the relatives, and never was there any talk of payment. Several families in addition to our own would sometimes descend on them at one time on a Saturday and on occasion stay overnight, with beds on the floor, and not only would Sam be busy cutting hair, but Sophie would be bustling about preparing the mountains of food needed to feed this army.
There was never any shortage of food. Sam saw to that because he had sufficient forethought every Friday after his week’s work was over at a large barber shop in the city to stop off at a wholesale delicatessen factory and buy several salamis, pounds of frankfurters, corned beef, pickles, rye breads, and bring it home with him in a sack that he carried over his shoulder. He never knew how many people would come or how long they would stay after the haircut, but he took no chance of having a hungry horde on his hands.
Perhaps, if the house that Uncle Sam, Aunt Sophie and their two daughters about my age lived in had been closer to the city it would have been even more crowded at the weekends than it generally was. But it was situated in an area that was difficult to get to, a new development called Elmwood Park, a virtual wilderness in those days. We took a streetcar to the end of the line first to get there, then we walked about five miles before we reached the frame house that had a run-down look to it.
Sam had bought the house sight unseen from a customer in the barber shop where he worked. He had never known such a place as Elmwood Park existed before he bought it and how far it was to the streetcar terminal. But behind all that lies a story that the family never got tired of telling and always with much laughter.
It was chiefly on account of Aunt Sophie that everything happened. She was a very beautiful woman, with glowing healthy cheeks and sparkling dark eyes, and a lush figure. Sam fell madly in love with her back there in England, when Sophie lived with my grandmother on our street and Sam was just learning the barbering trade from Mr Dargan, the barber on King Street, who also taught the violin.
But Sophie was quite a neurotic when it came to noises. She couldn’t abide the slightest noise around her. They had already moved from apartment to apartment because of noisy neighbours when they came to one where the people who lived above them practically drove Sophie insane with noises night and day. Sophie had tried talking to them, begging and pleading with them to tone things down and at least to wear slippers when they walked across the carpetless floor. But to no avail. They told her to go jump in the lake. Sophie then, in a great rage, countered with a noise barrage of her own to give them a taste of their own medicine. She placed a tall ladder in a spot that was directly beneath their bedroom, and mounted a portable record player on top of the ladder with a record of a popular song called ‘It’s three o’clock in the morning’ and set it for automatic, so that starting at three in the morning it played steadily over and over, with the volume set at the loudest.
When the upstairs couple complained, Sophie was delighted. She told the woman what she had told her, to go jump in the lake. They then took Sophie and Sam to court, and a judge fined them $150 for malicious mischief.
It was at this point that one of Sam’s customers told him a sad story of needing $1,000 for an operation on his eye, otherwise he would go blind and he would lose his job, and his five children would starve to death. His only possession of any worth was the house in Elmwood Park and he had been unable to sell it. Sam was soft-hearted and, even without Sophie’s problem and the fine they’d just paid, he might have done what he did then. Before he had finished cutting the man’s hair he had bought the house. Sophie, he had figured, couldn’t find a quieter place.
They wasted very little time moving out to Elmwood Park and, as Sophie explained later, she had certain misgivings when she saw the wilderness that was spread out before them as they arrived. She wondered then if perhaps there wasn’t such a thing as too much quiet. But nevertheless they began unloading their furniture into the new house and they were busy doing that, and marvelling at the quiet and serenity around them, with no other houses in sight for almost a mile, when suddenly that blessed stillness was shattered by the roar and the whistle blast of an approaching train. It grew louder and louder until it was absolutely deafening and seemed as if it might go right through the house, and when the startled couple recovered from the shock sufficiently to look through a window, they saw an express from the Chicago, St Paul & Minnesota Railroad racing past on tracks not more than fifteen feet behind the house.
The story has it that Sophie went wild with anger and beat Sam with her fists and, afterwards, for a long time, she used to throw stones at the trains as they raced past, and sometimes she hit the engineer in the locomotive and he learned to duck as he went by. But apparently, given enough time, you can get used to anything, and Sophie seemed to adjust to the train noise, and when we were there and a train went by and we had to stop talking until it had passed, there was no look of annoyance on her still beautiful face and she even smiled until it was quiet again. She had also developed a friendly relationship with the engineer at whom she had previously thrown stones because for a while he had given several blasts of the whistle as he went by her house instead of just one or two. They now waved to one another.
Altogether, the move to Elmwood Park seemed to have done her a lot of good and she now had a tolerance for noise that she’d never had before. There was plenty of it inside the house when we were all there. The house was nearly always packed with family visitors, there were never enough chairs and people had to stand while they were eating, and there was always eating going on, and mounds of salami and corned beef and pickles and seeded rye bread and plenty of mustard piled on the table, with everyone talking and kids running wildly about. Sophie didn’t seem troubled by that. She loved company. And I suppose Sam did. He was busy the whole time cutting hair. It was like a barber shop with people waiting their turn. And the snip snip of scissors sounded constantly.
We left there with our stomachs full, our breath reeking of garlic and our heads shorn. Among the men the smell of garlic was mixed with that of liquor. Sam always provided a bottle. He knew a good bootlegger and they didn’t have to depend on Abe’s bottle. The only bad part about it was the five-mile trek to the streetcar terminal.
My father once cursed Sam out for buying a house so far from where we got the streetcar. ‘Didn’t you have enough brains in your head to pick out a house where your guests didn’t have to walk so much to get to you and to get away from you?’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sam said quietly. He was a gentle man with a big heart, and
a great love for his wife and children. He was rather short, with a dark complexion and sad eyes. I never knew him to shout or lose his temper with anyone. He didn’t take offence when my father cursed him out. But he did finally buy a car, and he used to pick us up at the terminal and drive us to his house, and then he’d drive us back. The only thing my father had to grumble about now was that he hadn’t bought a bigger car so that we didn’t have to pack into it so tightly. Sam didn’t say anything then, but he did exchange his car for a bigger one, and it was in that one he came into the city to drive us to my Aunt Lily’s wedding.
Chapter Eleven
PHIL’S PARENTS HAD finally agreed to attend the wedding, and with that and with my grandfather safely out of the way there was no longer any need to put off the marriage that Phil wanted so badly. Aunt Lily had wanted it to be a very formal affair, with a full ceremony in a big synagogue and then a fancy reception and wedding feast in a fashionable hall, not only to please herself but to impress Phil’s wealthy parents.
But when my grandmother heard what it would cost she asked, ‘Who do you expect to pay for all this?’
‘We have to,’ Lily said. ‘It’s the bride’s family that pays for the wedding when a daughter marries.’
‘Is it?’ my grandmother said. ‘Well, then you’d better get yourself a gun.’
‘What are you talking about, Mama?’ Lily asked.
‘Because you’d have to put a gun to my head to get me to spend that kind of money. But even then I wouldn’t do it. Ten thousand dollars! Who d’you think I am, the Princess of Wales?’
‘Mama, do you want us to look like a bunch of schnorrers in front of Phil’s parents?’
It was then that my grandmother slapped her face, because Lily had trodden on dangerous ground. The word schnorrer meant beggar.
Aunt Lily cried, but gave up, and the wedding was planned for my grandmother’s apartment. It was good enough, my grandmother said. All the other girls, Ada and Sophie and Dora, had been married in her house and what was good enough for them was good enough for her, and if Phil’s parents didn’t like it they could go kiss her arse.
So it was settled and the invitations were sent out. We received one, and it set my father to grumbling and cursing because it meant that we’d have to buy a present. But there was more than that. I would need a suit to attend the wedding. All I had was my pair of long trousers and a sweater that I wore to school. A suit, such as both my brothers had, was as important as a present in order to attend a wedding.
My father gritted his teeth and threw malevolent looks at me as he raged, ‘What the bloody ’ell does he need a suit for? Where’s he going, to the king’s ball? Who the bloody ’ell will notice the difference what he wears? And why should I have to spend my money on him? He doesn’t bring a penny into this house. All he does is waste his time in a school when he should be working and earning money like everybody else.’
He carried on like that for quite some time. My mother said very little. But I know what was going through her mind. These were no longer the days when she waited trembling on a Saturday afternoon for him to dole out to her what he decided was enough from his pay. She no longer had to depend on him. There were my two brothers and sister contributing money to the house. In the end he may have realised that himself and he stomped off cursing but defeated.
There was only one place to buy clothes and that was Maxwell Street where there were bargains galore, two rows of pushcarts lining either side where pedlars hawked all kinds of goods, edible and non-edible, and garments of all kinds for men and women. And there were stores where suits of clothes hung outside dusty windows in lieu of signs to indicate this was a place where clothing could be bought cheap. Outside some of them were ‘pushers-in’, men who tried to inveigle you into their particular store, urging, grabbing your arm as you went by, almost forcing you to come in and try on a suit – cheap, cheap, cheap – a next-to-nothing price you couldn’t beat anywhere. They were sometimes difficult to get away from. You had to pull your arm free and keep walking.
My mother seemed to know where to go. She had been here before with Saul and Joe to buy suits for them. There was one place where she could depend on getting clothes at the cheapest possible price. There was no pusher-in at this store that we finally came to. But before we went in, we halted and my mother said in a low voice, ‘If you see something you like particularly don’t let the man know. Try to seem as if you aren’t sure about it.’
There was a technique for buying clothes on Maxwell Street and my mother was well versed in it. She’d had a lot of experience before, buying our clothes in the market in England, and there was not much difference. My mother knew immediately the moment we entered the store that we had come at the right time. It was empty save for the man who was standing behind the counter with a gloomy look on his unshaven face. It lit up at sight of my mother. He remembered her from the last time she was here. The gloom vanished. ‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘How are you? How good to see you again. How are your two boys? I see you’ve brought another one. So you have three boys. Well, well, well.’ All this in one effusive greeting that pleased my mother considerably.
‘I have four boys,’ she said.
‘Four! So where is the other one? Why didn’t you bring him too? You know I have the best suits for boys here at the cheapest prices.’
‘He’s too young to need a suit. You’ll have to wait a few more years.’
‘So I’ll wait. I’ve got plenty of time. Right now I’ll bet you want a suit for this one. You’re in luck. I just got in a new shipment of boys’ suits at bargain prices.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of buying,’ my mother said. ‘I’m just looking in case I should need one for him some time in the future.’
I was alarmed. I thought she really meant it. I did not know that she was playing a game according to the rules. The man knew. He did not seem disturbed. He shrugged. ‘Go right ahead and look,’ he said. ‘That’s what my store is for, so people can look. Who said anything about buying?’
He then started to pace up and down behind the counter with his hands clasped behind his back, ignoring us as if we were not there. My mother began to look. There were clothes hanging on racks and she went through them, with me at her side. I thought they were all good. I’d have taken any of them. But she apparently had her own ideas. She took one after another off the rack, brought it out to the light, examined it closely, tugged here and there at the cloth, looked at the linings, put it back on the rack and took off another, going through the same process, sometimes having me try on a jacket.
It must have taken about an hour before she came to the brown one and whispered to me, ‘Do you like this one?’
I’d have said yes to any of them, but this one I really did like and I said, ‘Yes.’
She put a hand to her lips and looked over at the proprietor. He had his back to us and was looking through the window. I had spoken rather loudly and I didn’t say ‘yis’ any more. I said ‘yes’ the American way and very clearly. He must have heard me. But it didn’t really matter. The game was being played out. It was now up to my mother to put it back on the rack and start leaving.
The proprietor turned away from the window. ‘So you couldn’t find anything you liked?’ he asked.
‘Not this time,’ my mother answered. ‘Perhaps next time I’ll see something for him that I like …’ That seemed final and she was ready to go, and I followed her, still puzzled and disappointed. I had liked that brown suit. It was double-breasted and very much like the one Joe had bought and that I had admired when I saw him wearing it.
But then my mother, seemingly on the way out, halted and said casually, ‘By the way, how much is that brown double-breasted suit?’
‘Which one?’
She went back to the rack and took it off and showed it to him.
He examined it carefully and finally said, ‘For you, seeing that you’re an old customer, sixteen dollars.’
‘Come, Harry,’ my m
other said to me, ‘let’s go.’
‘How much do you want to pay?’ the man asked quickly.
‘I told you,’ my mother said, ‘I’m not buying. I’m just looking. There’s another store down the street I want to look at.’
‘How much would you want to pay for the brown suit if you were buying?’
‘Seven dollars,’ my mother said.
‘Goodbye,’ the man said, turning back to go behind the counter again and look out through the window.
We actually went out. My disappointment was keen. The less chance there seemed of my getting the brown suit, the more I wanted it. I walked beside my mother and was about to voice my disappointment when I felt a hand on my shoulder from behind. I had not heard the footsteps. Perhaps my mother had. She did not seem surprised when she saw it was the man from the clothing store halting us.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll let you have it for fifteen dollars.’
‘I’ll give you eight,’ my mother said.
Out there on the sidewalk, a few feet away from the store, it was settled. Nine dollars and fifty cents. I went home elated with a brown double-breasted suit in a cardboard box under my arm. I couldn’t wait to put it on. I’d have to wait. The wedding was still a month off, towards the end of May. Phil had wanted it earlier, as soon as possible, but sometimes my grandfather came home for Passover, which took place in April, and they were taking no chances that he might come in time for the wedding, so Lily had persuaded Phil to wait another month after Passover, just to make sure the old man was not coming. She was still in deadly fear of Phil and his parents finding out about him.
And so I too had to curb my impatience and wait to put on my new suit.
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