World's Fair

by E. L. Doctorow

  My father seemed oblivious to all of this, but my mother stopped eating and dabbed her mouth with a napkin and pushed her chair back and sat with her purse in her lap, ready to go. She looked at the murals on the walls. She asked my father where Donald had gone on his delivery to be away so long. He said Donald had gone to Brooklyn.

  “He agreed to do that?” my mother said.

  My father laughed. “We gave him a choice. Did he want to go to Brooklyn or New Jersey. He chose Brooklyn.” My mother’s eyes narrowed. “Under the circumstances,” my father said, “he thought he was getting a good deal.” He looked at me: “Everything is relative,” he said.

  My father decided he wanted dessert. “How about some fresh fruit salad,” he said. “No thank you,” my mother said.

  I went with him to the food counter. “They have red Jell-O, your favorite,” he said. I didn’t want to disappoint him because I knew the Jell-O was hard, it was cut in cubes; I liked it as it was made at home and I was able to spoon it up while it was still shimmery and easily liquefied between the teeth. That was the way I liked my desserts. I liked to take a Dixie Cup and stir the ice cream around until it was soup and drink it off. My mother tapped her fingers on the table. The old man had left. She had put her tray on another table. She said, “I saw Lester take money from the register.”

  “That couldn’t be,” my father said.

  “But I’m telling you he did.”

  “If he did, he’ll put it back,” my father said.

  “No wonder the store isn’t making a dime, if one of the partners skims the cash register,” my mother said. “I’ve seen consoles disappear off the floor too. You won’t listen to me. The man is a thief.”

  “Rose,” my father said. “That’s why I don’t like to have you in the store. You’re a suspicious person, you’re always thinking the worst of people. You know nothing about business, why don’t you just let me take care of it?”

  “I know more about business than you do,” my mother said.

  She was very unhappy now. Icy, furious. Right in front of my eyes the day had turned bad. I knew it would be worse when my father got home. Then the true argument with the shouting and the name-calling would begin. I thought now I had probably realized everything would go this way before we ever set out the door. I was not surprised. In my mind I had traded a good subway ride for the desolate afternoon ahead, which now commenced, my mother taking my hand and walking out, leaving my father smoking a cigarette at the table. In the swinging door I went around twice while she waited outside. I saw my father still sitting in the Automat. He smiled and gave a sad little wave.

  FIFTEEN

  The next day my mother refused to come on the visit to Grandma and Grandpa. Donald chose to exercise his right not to go to family things if he didn’t want to, so I was the only one to accompany my father. I felt guilty doing this because it was far more fun than staying home with my glowering silent mother. She would listen to the New York Philharmonic broadcast and read and sew. That was hardly festive.

  Eastburn Avenue was empty as it tended to be on Sundays once past the lunch hour. In the morning there was always a big softball game in the schoolyard, but when it was over, the whole neighborhood grew quiet. My friends had to go visit their relatives too, or stay upstairs to receive relatives visiting them. To journey up the broad Concourse with my father was to be somehow in the proper rhythm of the day, like everyone else. He cheered up, too, outside the house. He loved to be going somewhere. He insisted we get off the bus two stops early to get a walk in. He walked with a jaunty stride. He claimed a brisk pace was the only way to get anywhere and was, besides, less tiring than walking slowly. I struggled to keep up, half running when I fell behind. “Throw your shoulders back,” he said. “Breathe in. Hold your head up. That’s the way. Look the world in the eye!” I understood this as a spiritual instruction. But I couldn’t have understood it as a self-urging, which I see it now to have been—in that way of the parent who expresses for the child in imperatives the prayers he makes for himself. From the same religion of health and hygiene, he insisted that I turn the water all cold at the end of my showers; I was still working on that, practicing by putting my head under the cold water first, then my shoulders, and so on. But I hadn’t got much beyond a few seconds. He had shown me too how to rub myself down with a towel afterward, using it on my back the way a shoeshine man used his strip of cloth to buff the shoes. “Rub hard,” he had said. “Bring the blood to the skin.”

  Immediately, when we arrived, my grandmother said, “So where’s Rose?” Without embarrassment my father said she was not feeling well. Clearly my grandmother understood the situation. She shook her head. My benign grandfather was sitting in his chair by the radio. We held our hands out palm to palm and he said, “You have grown since the last time.” Grandma bustled about setting out the tea things. My father had stopped at the Sutter bakery near Fordham Road. The babka he had bought was the centerpiece, a plump cinnamon loaf shaped like a baker’s hat.

  We stayed late into the afternoon, it was always this way with my father—to arrive late, and to stay late. The light faded, I grew bored. My grandfather smoked his Regent ovals and my grandmother, without my mother to contend with, was very happy, relaxed, freely prying into the finances of my family. She offered my father advice on running the store. My father adored her, calling her “Mamaleh,” which means little mother. Then he and my grandfather talked about the war in Spain. They agreed it was tragic that President Roosevelt was not helping the Spanish government fight the Fascists. My father grew heated. “Hitler sends dive-bombers, Mussolini sends tanks. I have to wonder, Pop. In the South there is still a poll tax. Negroes are lynched. Who is Roosevelt, anyway? What do we think he is?”

  My grandfather was more stoic: “You cannot expect of a President that he should not be a politician,” he said. “Even our revered Roosevelt.”

  Now it was late enough to hear The Shadow, on the radio. The Shadow was Lamont Cranston, a wealthy man-about-town, who possessed the power to cloud men’s minds and become invisible. By this means he fought crime. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” he said in his invisible voice at the beginning of every program. “The Shadow knows.” And then he laughed a sniggling nasal laugh that made him sound evil. That had always slightly bothered me. When the Shadow went into his invisible mode, you could tell because his voice sounded as if it were coming through a telephone; this made sense because you couldn’t see people in real life either when they were talking to you on the telephone. But there was something stunted about the Shadow’s adventures. They were no contest. Typically, in a Shadow story, it would take Lamont Cranston a while to realize he was faced with a severe enough crisis to change into the Shadow. Sometimes it would happen that his girlfriend Margo was threatened. The criminals were always stupid and talked either with foreign accents or in rough gravelly voices with the diction of the Dead End Kids. They would have guns and shoot wildly, but to no avail. The Shadow would laugh his sniggling laugh and tell them they had missed. Actually I knew that with a tommy gun a smart crook could hold his finger down on the trigger and spin around in a 360-degree circle spraying bullets up and down and so have a fair chance of hitting the Shadow whether he was invisible or not, and no matter how far he threw his voice. His invisible blood would run. But they never thought of that.

  Listening to programs, you saw them in your mind. From the sound effects you were able to imagine what things looked like and tell from the sound of its engine if a car was sleek and streamlined, or big like a taxi with lots of leg room and a running board. I thought of Margo, Lamont Cranston’s friend, as looking like my mother’s friend Mae but without her glasses, and without Mae’s little jokes. Margo was an attractive woman, but lacking in humor. Cranston himself I thought a little slow-moving to take as long as he did to go into action; he was fairly sedentary, as compared, say, with the Green Hornet, who could probably lick him in a fight if they went at it visibly. I didn
’t think of the Shadow as being able to jump rooftops or climb ropes or run very fast. On the other hand, why should he have to? Also, I wondered about his restraint when he could become invisible anytime he chose. I wondered if he ever took advantage of women, as I surely would. Did he ever watch Margo Lane go to the bathroom? I knew that if I had the power to be invisible I would go into the girls’ bathroom at P.S. 70 and watch them pulling their drawers down. I would watch women take their clothes off in their homes and they wouldn’t even know I was there. I wouldn’t make the mistake of speaking up or making a sound, they would never even know I had been there. But I would forever after know what they looked like. The thought of having this power made my ears hot. Yes, I would spy on naked girls but I would also do good. I would invisibly board a ship, or, better still, a China Clipper and I would fly to Germany and find out where Adolf Hitler lived. I would in absolute safety, with no chance of being caught, go to Hitler’s palace, or whatever it was, and kill him. Then I would kill all of his generals and ministers. The Germans would be going crazy trying to find the invisible avenger. I would whisper in their ears to be good and kind, and they would thereafter be thinking God had been speaking. The Shadow had no imagination. He neither looked at naked women nor thought of ridding the world of dictators like Hitler or Mussolini. If his program hadn’t been on a Sunday afternoon, I would probably not have listened to it.

  Hitler was on my mind a lot lately. I had heard his voice on a radio broadcast, he shouted in German, which I heard as a language full of spitting and gulping and galumphing, almost as if the words were broken in the teeth; it sounded as if he were shattering glass in his mouth, as if he breathed fire and made the air explode in front of his face. He would say something and you’d hear his fist pounding the speaker’s platform and then a great roar go up from the crowd, like some shrieking wind, and then it would begin to pulsate and radio static would crack through it, and the announcer, speaking calmly in English, would describe what was going on at this rally, the way everyone’s right arm extended straight in the air as the crowd chanted and did this salute taken from ancient Rome, arms shooting up and big red-and-black Nazi flags with swastikas fluttering everywhere.

  I tried that salute in front of the mirror in my room, throwing my arm forward with the elbow stiff, and trying at the same time to click my heels. Donald marched around my room holding a small black comb under his nose like Hitler’s moustache and chanting German gibberish. He brushed his hair down over his forehead. It was funny. It was easy to imitate Hitler. Actually, when I had first seen his picture in a magazine I had confused him with Charlie Chaplin. Everyone seemed to notice the resemblance, they both wore these little black moustaches, and had black hair and heavy eyebrows. Charlie Chaplin himself had noticed the resemblance and Donald told me Charlie was making a movie about Hitler that was going to be really great because Charlie hated Hitler. I resolved to see that movie when it came out.

  I found it disturbing, however, that they resembled each other. I loved Charlie Chaplin. We had the same taste in women, like the blind flower girl, whom we both found very beautiful and kind. He had helped her, as I would have. He was a wonderful little guy, he never got as mad at other people as they did at him, even when they were fighting, although he was often hurt by them. He just picked himself up and swung and ran. In Modern Times big voices telling him what to do came from speakers in this shining modern factory, but he himself, Charlie, never spoke, no matter how bad things got, he never made a sound: like the time he went after the loose nut on the assembly line and got picked up by the moving machinery and was sent winding through the gears. When he had his lunch a machine wiped his mouth for him. It seemed to me an unfortunate coincidence that he and Hitler looked alike. My father had a moustache too, they all three had moustaches. I dreamed one night my father sat with Charlie on one knee and Hitler on the other; he held on to them by the backs of their necks as if they were ventriloquist dummies, and made their mouths clack open and shut and held out each of them to me in turn, one with his floppy little legs dangling in baggy trousers and a cutaway coat, the other in a brown Army uniform with leather boots. And then my father laughed.

  DONALD

  Sure, I remember when we moved to Eastburn Avenue. I pushed you there in your carriage. It was great moving to a larger place. I had my own room. I was eight, a big fellow. The responsible older brother.

  It’s only natural that we remember things differently. I had Mom and Dad to myself for all those years before you joined us. We were prosperous. Before he got into the retail end of things Dad was in the sound box business. In those days record players, Victrolas, had spring motors, you cranked them up like you cranked cars, and the critical element was the sound box at the end of the tone arm. It was a metal cylinder, about an inch wide, three inches in diameter, with a convex grille face, and inside was a diaphragm that vibrated. You stuck a steel needle into a socket on the rim, and tightened it with a fixed screw, and put the needle on the record and that was how you got sound. Dad ran the business from an office in the Flatiron Building.

  The day Lindbergh was welcomed up Fifth Avenue we saw it from the office window. I was very young, maybe four, and I stood on the windowsill and saw Lindbergh in an open car, all the confetti falling, the crowd going wild. I was so excited I leaned too far out and almost lost my balance. Dad had to pull me back in.

  You say he didn’t use force. Maybe he’d mellowed a bit by the time you came along. With me he was very strict and didn’t hesitate to haul off when he felt it was necessary. My first day of school I refused to go. No amount of cajoling, imploring or bribing by Mom could budge me. Dad lost his temper. He picked me up and carried me to school under his arm. I’ll never forget it. He carried me right up the steps and down the hall, and opened the door to my classroom and dumped me on the floor, in front of everyone.

  There was another time, in Rockaway. You and I were staying with Grandma and Grandpa. They had a bungalow for the summer. The folks shipped us out there to get us out of the heat, but they didn’t come themselves, Dad had to work and Mom couldn’t leave her mother. So you and I were on our own with the old people. We ran around all day on the beach and played in the penny arcades, and in that time I don’t think either of us bathed. So on the second weekend the folks came out to see us. Mom will tell you the story. She saw these two children walking toward her in the street, I was holding your hand, and your pants drooped and my socks were around my ankles, and our faces were dirty, she thought at first we were a pair of street urchins, she didn’t realize she was looking at her own sons. She was furious that Grandma, with her vaunted cleanliness, had let things get so out of hand. There was a big argument. Dad asked me to go into the bathroom and have a shower. I refused. He was mad, everyone was mad, he picked me up just as he had my first day in school, and turned on the shower and threw me in, clothes and all.

  He was a terrific athlete. He spent a lot of time with me, teaching me to play tennis, or to skate or swim. He urged me to excel. Always I was made to know what his expectations were for me. I think this explains somewhat why we had a difficult time with each other in later years. After you came along it was made clear to me that I was to help with your upbringing, and put in time with you as he had with me. And so I did. A lot of the things I taught you he had taught me. One passed things on. One worked for the family. You know that picture of Dad and me walking together stride for stride on Sixth Avenue on some business matter—where is that picture, do you have it?—I was all of thirteen at the time. I started working for him very young. Take a look at that picture when you have the chance. I have on a suit and tie just like his, but I’m wearing knickers. It’s a tinted photograph, our faces are washed in this rosy color, Dad has a cigar in his mouth, he has a packet of business papers under his arm, his shoulders are back, he looks happy, we both look happy, healthy, energetic, full of beans, and the street photographer picked up on this father and son, and snapped the picture and sold it to us.


  Dad liked to patronize street people. You would be walking along with him and he’d suddenly veer over to a pushcart, or stop to buy a pamphlet from someone. He did that as a matter of principle. He idealized the little man. He had a political consciousness. He rode the train to Boston for a rally for Sacco and Vanzetti. He wanted to take me but Mom wouldn’t let him. The case obsessed him. He brought home Upton Sinclair’s novel about it—Boston—it was in two volumes. He was very much a man of his time. He devoured the papers. Maybe everyone was more radical in those days. Nowadays when people protest something, they’re looked on as oddities. But, for instance, Dad was talking about Hitler very early. He was onto him. That doesn’t sound so unusual now, but you’d be surprised how little was known about Hitler, it took the establishment in America a long time to understand what was going on. Dad was an antifascist. He was a leftist, like our grandpa, but more of a fighter. In the big strikes—steel, coal, automobile—he was on the side of the unions. He didn’t believe in minding his own business, his brain was always working. You could be sure he’d come up with another slant on things. Like when King Edward of England abdicated the throne to marry his girlfriend Wally Simpson. Well, Mom loved that story. You know, a king giving up his throne for love. It was in all the papers and magazines, the King’s abdication speech was on the radio, carried shortwave from London. Everyone loved that story. But not Dad. He got angry because Mom took it so seriously. “Don’t you realize,” he said, “the idea of a king in the twentieth century is ridiculous? The English king is a fossil. Like all of them in Europe now, a bunch of useless dimwits who strut around and indulge themselves at public expense. This romantic king of yours lives on the tax revenues taken from working people. I can see why the upper classes of England would find him useful, but why the American press treats this as serious news, and you fall for it, is another matter.” Mom was quite miffed. “Don’t you ever relax about anything?” she asked him. “I’m not the intellectual you are—all right?” They disagreed about politics as about most things.