It was much too large for me. The sleeves of the jacket came below my wrists and the shoulders hung loosely. The trousers were too wide round the waist and too long. The cuffs hung down on to my shoes and the bottoms folded like an accordion. I had tried the suit on in the store and all this must have been perceptible to my mother. But it had not bothered her. She preferred it that way, figuring with her usual prudence that eventually I would grow into it and I would not have to buy another suit for several years.
In the meantime, she made several alterations and made it look fairly presentable on me, and the wedding day came at last when I could put it on. Surveying myself in the long mirror that hung at the back of the bathroom door, I was well pleased with what I saw. My mother, too. They were all gathered around, watching, even my sister Rose, who usually remained aloof from family affairs.
However, there was a contemptuous sneer on her thin, pointed face as she looked, and then without a word she turned and walked away. Joe was more voluble. He was downright angry at my mother for having chosen a suit that looked exactly like his, brown and double-breasted and with a vest. Except that mine might have been a comic version of his. He was smart-looking in his brown double-breasted suit, smart and handsome, everything fitting his slim body well, whereas mine hung baggily like …
‘He looks like a scarecrow all dressed up to frighten the birds away,’ my brother Saul said and laughed.
Joe agreed. He was furious. ‘Couldn’t you have picked another colour at least?’ he said to my mother.
‘It was such a good bargain I couldn’t let it go,’ she said. ‘But don’t worry. They won’t mistake him for you.’
Then she was sorry she had said that, for next moment Saul quipped, ‘Not with his face.’
He might have said the same thing about himself. We resembled one another with our hooked noses and the glasses both of us wore. Joe was the handsome one of the three of us, with a straight nose and dark eyes with long lashes.
At any other time I might have felt incensed over Saul’s remark, and I might have given him a punch in the ribs and said something about the way he looked – like a rabbi. He had chosen a black suit, black because that was what orthodox Jews wore and a rabbi especially. His prayer shawl fringes stuck out of the waist as prominently as ever, and lately he had taken to wearing a yarmulke that was perched on top of his head like a bird’s nest.
But I was in no mood for fighting. Looking into the long mirror that hung on the back of the bathroom door, I was quite pleased with the way I looked. I thought I looked quite spiffy, a regular swank. To go with the suit, I wore a striped shirt that Uncle Saul had once worn, and one of his ties also, a bright yellowish colour. The trousers were still too long in spite of all my mother’s cutting and sewing, and the bottoms still folded like an accordion on to my shoes, but as far as I was concerned I had never looked better and I was looking forward to the wedding.
Well, so they were all in a good mood and looking forward to the big celebration, for that was all it could be with the passionate love Phil had shown Aunt Lily all these months. Even my father seemed to be in a rare good mood and he, certainly, had a lot to look forward to. There would be plenty of booze. Aside from the bottles Abe was bringing from his bootlegger’s cache, others in the family had announced they were bringing bottles.
And my mother had been up almost the entire night baking cakes for the occasion. We were loaded with these and the wedding present, a milk jug that my mother thought the newly married couple should have, when Sam drew up in front of our house with the big, second-hand Maxwell for which he had traded in his much smaller Ford. We hurried down the steps with our packages when we heard the horn blow.
There it was at the kerb, a bright yellow colour, with Sophie and the two girls perched on the high back seat. It was a convertible and the top was down. The weather was warm and sunny. We piled in, scrambling for the best seats, trying to avoid a lap, squeezing in tightly. My father, gazing and seeing the sky, said, ‘What the bloody ’ell kind of car is this? Where’s the other ’alf?’
It was explained to him that this was a convertible, with a top that folded. Sam offered to put up the top if it would make him feel more comfortable. My father chose to ignore this and said, ‘So long as you were getting a new car, couldn’t you afford to buy a whole one instead of an ’alf?’
Sam’s reply was to step on the pedal and send the car forward with such speed that a wind gusted over our heads and promptly Saul’s yarmulke flew off. He gave a yell of dismay and Sam halted the car with a screech of brakes, and Saul jumped out and raced after his yarmulke, which was still rolling in the wind. He caught it finally and plastered it back on his head, and Sam lurched forward again, with all of us laughing so hard we were doubled over, and there was even a sort of grin on my father’s face that I had never seen before.
So it was in this extraordinarily gay mood that we drove to the west side and to my grandmother’s house on Fourteenth Street. A small crowd of mostly young kids had collected around the stoop, as often happens at places where celebrations are happening in the hope that some of the refreshments would be sent down and passed around among them. In the meantime their attention had been drawn to the large black limousine parked at the kerb. A uniformed chauffeur was leaning protectively at its side, smoking a cigarette, eyes warning the crowd to keep its distance.
We couldn’t help noticing it as Sam parked his second-hand Maxwell behind the limousine, and Sam, gazing at it admiringly, said, ‘That must be Phil’s parents’ car. Some beauty, eh?’
Yes, it was a beauty, and awesome, and the chauffeur immaculate in the dark uniform with peaked cap and shiny leather leggings was awesome too, and Sam was right, it was Phil’s parents’ car.
They were here already, and they looked lost and uncomfortable in the packed, noisy room filled with tobacco smoke and relatives and kids running wildly about. We saw the couple from a distance as we entered, the man as short and stubby as Phil wearing a tuxedo, the woman in a dark evening gown, rich-looking to match the limousine downstairs.
Phil led us over to meet them. He had been the first to greet us. He too wore a tuxedo and he was in a high mood, as indeed he always was, but this time simply intoxicated with joy, as he himself said when he greeted us at the door. ‘I’ve never been drunk in my life,’ he said. ‘But tonight I am. Only I haven’t touched a drop. I never do. But I feel as if I’ve drunk a gallon of what’s in the bottles. But come meet my parents.’
He led us to them through the crowd and introduced us one by one. ‘Father, Mother, I want you to meet the people who’ve just come from England …’ He rattled off our names and we shook hands, and I couldn’t help noticing the lack of warmth on their part, the woman especially. She was taller than her husband and she wore a lot of glittering jewellery. Barney said later that she out-jewelled my grandmother and it was a wonder Grandma didn’t order her out of the house for that reason.
I noticed too that Phil repeated, ‘They just came from England,’ as if that might be some special attribute that would impress them.
I doubt if it did. I doubt if they were pleased at all with anything going on here. They looked very much as if they would rather have been elsewhere. The noise was growing. The bottles had been opened. The men were talking loudly and laughing, and quite clearly the drinking was having its effect. I heard my father’s voice shouting at Eli, telling him to put the bloody bottle down and drink like a human being. The noise was tremendous. Children were chasing one another and screaming. Mothers were yelling at them. Now and then came the sound of slapping and a different kind of screaming. In the midst of all this bedlam the rabbi arrived and there was general relief. Now that he was here there would be less time to wait for the eating.
Things quietened down a bit after his arrival. He was a bearded man and fairly young, and apparently as anxious as everyone else to get this thing done with as little delay as possible. He shook hands briskly with those he had to and gave a few
instructions for mounting a chuppah made of four tall poles and a piece of velvet over the top of the poles, under which the couple would be married.
Uncle Saul took his place at the piano and Eli was pulled away from the liquor table to play the harmonica with him for the wedding march. Eli could barely walk, and he seemed to have forgotten where his harmonica was and was fumbling for it in various pockets as they led him into the front room, with his face flushed and grinning.
The rabbi continued to give instructions. The wedding march would start at the back of the apartment, in the kitchen. The groom would come first accompanied by his father and mother. The bride would follow with her mother.
‘Where’s the father?’ the rabbi asked.
I saw Phil’s father and mother exchange a glance and I heard the father say, ‘Yes, where is he?’
‘He’s in New York,’ one of the uncles said.
‘New York?’ the rabbi said, slightly incredulous. ‘He can’t be here for his daughter’s wedding?’
It was Barney who spoke then, the big White Owl cigar wagging up and down in his mouth, his eyes twinkling. ‘He has an important Board of Directors meeting and couldn’t get away.’
The rabbi shook his head, taking the excuse seriously, but deploring it. ‘Then let one of the brothers take his place,’ he said.
The choice fell on my father, who was the oldest, but he was already too drunk to stand up, so Uncle Morris took his place and the wedding march began, with Uncle Saul thumping out the opening bars of ‘Here Comes the Bride’, and Eli making a weird assortment of sounds with his harmonica and obviously very drunk.
Phil walked slowly and in time to the music with his father on one side of him and his mother on the other, Phil’s face wreathed in one huge happy smile, but theirs quite noticeably grim.
And now the bride followed from the kitchen, wearing the long, white bridal gown she had rented from a store, the back trailing on the floor behind her, my grandmother on one side, Uncle Morris on the other. They went through the dining room and into the front room, and there the couple came together, and judging from the look that came over Phil’s face all of us expected him to swing her backwards and give her one of his long, passionate kisses.
However, he remained calm, though you could almost hear the fast beating of his heart under the stiff white front of his tuxedo, and he remained still throughout the ceremony and until he had stamped on the wineglass that signalled the marriage had taken place. And cries of ‘Mazeltov’ broke out.
Only then did Phil give vent to the powerful emotion that he had been resisting until now. He swept Aunt Lily into his arms and bent her backwards with her long veil sweeping the floor, and kissed her long and passionately, as he had always done, except that this was with a hunger that could not be appeased in the usual length of time but lasted while everybody yelled approval and applauded as though it were a performance on a stage.
And then, as soon as he had released her gasping for breath, her lipstick smeared on her face, there were congratulations from the crowd, everybody struggling to get to the couple, to kiss, to shake a hand, and then Uncle Saul began pounding away on the piano. It was a dance tune. Eli did not participate. He had gone back to the table where the bottles were – the bar, they called it. It was just as well. Uncle Saul did even better without his screeching harmonica. The rollicking piece he thumped out was easily recognisable as the hora, the Jewish dance of celebration.
A circle was formed. There were to be no exceptions. Everybody was dragged into it, kids and all. My sister Rose did manage to escape and went off into a bedroom and shut herself in there. Phil’s parents tried to escape also, but hands forced them into the ring and around everybody danced, with much laughter, with Uncle Saul thumping away at the piano. It was an oval rather than a circle. It stretched from the front room to the dining room, where the men were seated at the table drinking and well on the way to being drunk, my father foremost among them. And now the table was also being used for the food that my mother and other women were bringing out from the kitchen, with my grandmother supervising. There were heaped plates of corned beef, steaming flanken, salami, bologna and potatoes and pickles, and heaps of rye bread and the cakes my mother had baked last night, filling the house all night long with their delicious smells, and soon a wild horde of kids swarmed down on everything, grabbing handfuls of meats and bread and cake and pickles, and devouring them in various parts of the house with my grandmother casting black looks at them and the pickle juice that was running down on to her floors, even on to the carpet in the front room, but she was unable to do anything about it – not yet – though she would eventually.
The house was bedlam, with all the noise, all the eating and drinking, and it was very warm, and it was at this juncture that Phil’s parents tried to make their escape, and Phil pleaded with them to stay longer; Aunt Lily also – she still in her white rented bridal gown and flushed with the warmth of the room and the excitement of the event – imploring them at least to have a corned beef sandwich before they left. It was the best, she said, bought at Levinsky’s famous delicatessen on the east side.
At this juncture someone in the room cried out, ‘Open a window, for God’s sake, I’m dying from the heat.’ Phil was standing near one and immediately he responded, opening it wide, and in that moment the sound of a voice singing below became audible. It was a man’s voice, an old man’s, obviously, because it was cracked and hoarse and not in good tune, and it was an old, sentimental love song, ‘I love you always’, one sung often at weddings.
Phil became excited. Turning his head round from the window to his parents he cried, ‘Look, there’s an old blind beggar downstairs serenading us. Let me bring him up here for a glass of wine, besides what I’ll give him in his tin cup. I’ll have him sing for us right here. Now you must stay, you absolutely must. It would be a sin not to do this for him. Am I right, darling?’
He had said this last to Lily, and in his excitement he did not see the horror on her face and how she was too stunned to reply to his question, because she had recognised that voice, as I had, as my grandmother had and all the others. They had all known it and guessed that he had come home unexpectedly to find a wedding in progress in his apartment. He would have learned that from the crowd gathered outside and the long black limousine with the smartly uniformed chauffeur leaning up against it. They would have told him, so now he was putting on an act that could only be vengeful.
But Phil did not know anything of this and undoubtedly did not notice the stunned silence that had fallen over those who did know, the family. He was bent on bringing the old man up here and would have gone himself in his impulsive fashion, rushing down the three flights of stairs, except that he knew if he left his parents’ side they would escape in a moment.
I was standing near him, and he turned to me and said, ‘Harry, go down and tell that old blind beggar to come up here. He probably can’t see his way up the stairs, so you’ll have to guide him. Go on now before he leaves.’
I hesitated. From a distance I saw the stricken look on my mother’s face. I thought she was going to tell me not to go. But she didn’t and I went down the stairs, wondering what I was going to say to my grandfather. Perhaps, though, we’d all been mistaken. Perhaps it was some other beggar.
He was there singing when I got outside and there was no mistaking him. He wore the same ragged clothes that were his uniform, and he had the cane and the tin cup and behind the blue glasses were, I am sure, the twinkling eyes, and when he saw me there was the chuckle. The crowd of mostly young kids gathered around him glanced quickly over towards me as I came out, hoping for the plate of goodies that usually came, and then seeing me empty-handed, turned back disappointed.
I went up to him, afraid to call him ‘Grandpa’ lest everybody hear and know. And he too kept up the pretence of not having any connection with me, and being careful not to use my name.
‘They’d like you to come upstairs and sing for them,’
I said. ‘And to have a glass of wine.’
He had stopped singing and was looking directly at me. He pointed to himself and said, as if he could not believe the invitation, ‘Me?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I was very nervous. Some in the crowd started to yell, ‘How about me? I’ll come up and have a glass of wine.’ There was laughter.
‘Well,’ the old man said, ‘how can I refuse?’ He then addressed his audience, saying, ‘You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve been invited to the wedding.’ He spoke to the chauffeur, who was grinning as he smoked a cigarette. ‘I’m going to join your master. Do you have any message for him? I’ll be glad to give it to him. Shall I perhaps tell him you’re tired of waiting for him?’
‘No, don’t do that.’ The chauffeur laughed and those in the crowd started yelling, ‘Tell ’em we’re tired of waiting for some food.’
‘I’ll tell them,’ the old man promised, and then to me, ‘All right, young man, lead the way. I’m blind, you know, so you’ll have to guide me.’
I kept up the farce. I took hold of his arm and led him up the stoop and into the house, but once inside I let go of it and said, ‘You know the way yourself, Grandpa.’
He chuckled. ‘I can’t fool you, can I?’
‘No.’
‘So who’s getting married up there?’
‘Aunt Lily and Phil.’
‘Phil? Who’s Phil? Is that his car down there, the big black one with the chauffeur?’
‘No, that’s Phil’s parents’.’
‘So he must be rich, too. She landed a good one. But it’s about time she landed someone. Why didn’t they tell me she was getting married?’
I didn’t answer.
‘That’s all right, Harry,’ he said. ‘I know. I know everything.’ He chuckled, then said, ‘But I won’t spoil it for them.’
I wasn’t sure I knew what he meant, so I said nothing again.
We went up the three flights of stairs together, and he laboured quite a bit as we got to the top and I had to slow down for him. But he would not let me help him as I tried to do and he shook my hand off his arm. We entered the apartment together.
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