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  What kind of man flogs his little boy?

  Where did Jake find an instrument of torture that was outlawed before he was born?

  Was it part of Jake’s genius for speed to persuade by force?

  What kind of man was he?

  According to Granny’s sister Rose, “Jake would yank Ethel by the hair if she looked at another man.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Once, in the car, we pulled alongside another car, and Ethel smiled at the driver,” Aunt Rose says. “Jake jerked her head around by the hair.”

  “He was affectionate and generous,” Aunt Eva, the youngest sister, counters. “We looked forward to his visits in Princeton. He bought lavish gifts. Every piece of furniture we had came from him. He bought us our first radio.”

  Jake used to introduce his children as “My Three Diamonds,” and wear a pinkie ring with three diamonds in it. He cleaned his nails with a gold pocketknife I now keep on my key ring. I use his Waltham watch and store my pencils in his kneeling Indian tobacco jar. Every day my hands touch things his hands touched. In our living room there’s a framed poster with one hundred and ten photos on it titled “Notables of Greater New York.” The portraits are of people who contributed to the creation of the New York Municipal Building, “the largest structure undertaken at that time by any municipality.” If you laid its forty-one floors side by side, a farm of twenty-seven acres would be completely covered. The building was designed by McKim, Mead & White and built by the Thompson-Starrett Company. Whenever I have jury duty, I stroll the colonnade and think, My grandfather cleared the land for this. Jake’s picture is on the poster along with J. P. Morgan’s, Elsie de Wolfe’s, Andrew Carnegie’s, and Madame Pacquin’s of hand-cream fame. My eye goes straight to Jake, though, third row down, third from the left, starched white collar, stony eyes, the possibility of a smile.

  Jake never took my father to a fight or a game, but he did introduce him to the Russian Baths on Second Avenue, where the tougher you were, the higher you sat, because heat rises. Afterward, an old Russian beat Dad with maple leaves. Once, Jake came home with a puppy in each pocket. My father liked to come home with surprise pets too: Cookie Lulubelle, a manic foxhound he picked up at a firehouse. Morgen, a male beagle I had a pretty good relationship with until somebody explained what he was doing to my calf wasn’t hugging. Tabby, a gift-wrapped cat under our Christmas tree, who routed my forearm. We celebrated Christmas, not Chanukah, despite Dad’s Orthodox origins. We were nonobservant Jews, assimilated anti-Roosevelt lefties. Restaurateurs blamed Roosevelt for the unions. You couldn’t fire a waiter unless he was caught red-handed gambling or stealing. A waiter could come in soused, smelling like the bottom of a shoe, he could snarl at a customer, and you couldn’t fire him. We were quasi-liberals terrified of signing a petition, because petitions leave records that could haunt you. My father didn’t vote. He was in the store before the booths opened. When the League of Women Voters called every year, I would hear him say, “Madam, I’m terribly sorry. I can’t vote. I’m a Danish Nationalist.”

  In 1929 Harold Ross asked Robert Coates to write a profile on Jake for The New Yorker. Jake died before it had a chance to run. Ross didn’t run profiles on dead people, so James Thurber assigned E. B. White to write something shorter. White laid Jake to rest in “Talk of the Town.” I wrote to Astrid Peters Coates asking if she knew where I might find a draft of her husband’s piece. She wrote back saying Coates’s papers were in the Special Collections of the University of Wyoming. I made contact on the Internet. A librarian e-mailed me back: “I have researched the Robert Coates Papers (7144) but I am sorry to report that there are no references or records about Jacob Volk.” Maybe Coates hadn’t started the piece yet. Maybe he tossed the pages. What I can know about Jacob Volk is now finite.

  The White piece ends with this paragraph:

  Lately Jake had been taking life easy. Everybody liked him. He had lots of money. Noons he’d turn up at his Park Avenue office, and eat a caviar sandwich, sitting there in his shirtsleeves. Nights there were fights in the Garden to go to. With all his prosperity he remained a true East Sider in his talk and his way of thinking. He had, however, trod the crumbling ruins of too many haughty dwellings ever to feel self-conscious or out of place, no matter where he was. Jake knew that everything that goes up comes down.

  At different times in my life I would read the White piece and see Jake different ways: Jake, the roué; Jake, the wise man; Jake, the show-off; Jake, the pro. I’d see E. B. White different ways too. The printed word is labile. It changes as you change. At one point after reading the piece, I became obsessed with the taste Jake loved—caviar. Specifically, the caviar sandwich. Was it a closed sandwich? Was it on soda crackers? Did he dump a tin on a bialy? Even in a restaurant family caviar is the treat of treats, a luxury rationed out on crustless toast points. I love its briny taste and the firecracker sensation as hundreds of slippery eggs from primeval sturgeon explode in my mouth. I love pressing my tongue against the roof of my mouth and feeling them pop. It’s like eating the Fourth of July.

  Did Jake think about the buildings he tore down, where the families went? Was he troubled by this, a professional displacer of people who supported forty-eight fraternal and philanthropic societies? Did he feel different about taking down a tenement than taking down a beautiful mansion? Does a man who flogs his son and pulls his wife’s hair worry about people? I don’t know. But I liked that I had an ancestor who returned to Vilna and built an orphanage. And I liked the part he played in New York’s history, that he literally cleared the way for the city I live in. You can’t build a new city before you take the old one down. Deconstructionists are not memorialized. What they do vanishes. They make emptiness. Then something fills it. So there’s nothing you can point to and say, “Look what Jacob Volk did.” But if he could create the space to build a great city, perhaps I could do something valuable too. No matter what time period you live in, the opportunity to make your mark, to do something that matters is there. Making your mark does not mean making money. It means putting your X on your time. Inventors do it. Teachers. Lawmakers. Producers. Artists. Soldiers. Axe murderers. Everybody’s got a shot, even a miller’s son from Vilna.

  When someone in your family dies before you’re born, you know them anecdotally. But if you’re lucky, there’s another way. If you’re lucky, there’s written material. And if you’re really lucky, some of that material contains quotes. With quotes you get to hear the person’s voice, hear him in his own words. There are two quotes that tell me who Jake was better than any story. Distinguished Jews of America says he was known as “the Chesterfield of the East Side, for though he could ride a horse, row a boat, play the national game, umpire a boxing bout or act as floor manager of the endless social dances of the district, he was always dressed as the occasion required. Believing that there is a time for work and a time for play, Mr. Volk is sure that ‘variation makes you fitted for the sterner battle of life.’ ”

  Jake preferred wrecking skyscrapers to homes. Homes were built to last. When he tore down the W. K. Vanderbilt château on Fifty-second Street, he took a loss. The other words I have out of Jake’s mouth came when he was building his house, which still stands, at 2264 Eighty-second Street in Bensonhurst. A friend asked him why he wasn’t salvaging the magnificent Vanderbilt interiors to use in his own home. “Listen,” said Jake, “am I a piker? You won’t see secondhand stuff in my house.”

  Polly Ann Lieban Morgen, “Best Legs in Atlantic City, 1916

  FRICASSEE

  Everybody did one thing better than anybody else. Aunt Gertie sang the works of Victor Herbert. Aunt Ruthie mamboed. Granny Ethel braked with such finesse it was impossible to tell the moment the car went from moving to a stop. My grandfather was a master bridge-player. My grandmother tied a bow. If you needed a bow tied, if you had anything that would look better with a bow—a hat, a dress, a blouse, a headband, or a handbag—Polly could make and tie the perfect bow f
or it. Bows of thick satin, quivering organdy, sturdy faille, streaming silk John Singer Sargent bows, striped bows, moiré, breathy tulle, Madame Georgette de la Plante bows. The right bow on the right place could make an outfit. For my sixth-grade graduation Mom picked up a plain white cotton shift. The dress was straight-cut, no frills—a shroud. “Turn around, darling,” my grandmother said. She spread her hands around my waist. “Ah. That’s it!” She made a wide pale blue satin sash with a notched bow that trailed beyond the hem. The satin looked like water spilling down my waist. The morning of the big event I walked over to her apartment so she could tie it.

  It was said of Polly Morgen, “She could do anything with a needle.” She could make dresses, and when my mother was little, she stitched up coats with beaver collars, coats with lamb cuffs, coats with seal collars and cuffs. She’d buy a plain cashmere cardigan, then customize it, lining it with lace or chiffon or lace and chiffon. Then she’d sew butterfly appliqués or pearls all over it. She sewed so fast her hand was a blur.

  “Thread this needle for me, will you, Zeeseh Kepaleh?”

  I’d thread the needle, proud to help.

  “Vey is meer! Utz a mayor! In your life! Did you ever see such eyes? Umbashrign! Gutenyu! Did you see that, Gert? How my Bubbaleben got it on the first try?”

  My grandmother failed to interest me in mahjong, but she did teach me how to chain stitch, hem, and embroider. On some level I consider myself a failure because I have not been able to teach my children how to sew, not even a button. “Ma!” They bring the shirt to me. “Ma! I have to wear this now!”

  “Get the sewing box.”

  They go to my closet. They take down the box. They sit next to me on the bed and thread the needle, getting it on the first try.

  “You’ve got to learn how to do this yourself,” I say, unscrewing the Hellmann’s button jar. “Okay, now, make the knot.”

  They make the knot. They stare at the knot. Then they wail, “I can’t do it! Can’t you do it for me just this once, Ma? How can you see what’s under?” “I’m late, Ma.” Or just, “Ouch!”

  Sewing on a button, like avoiding eye contact on the subway, is a basic life skill. Along with How to Windex a Mirror and How to Make English Muffin Pizza, sewing on a button was taught in the seventh grade by Miss Almeida in home ec. But home ec isn’t on New York school curricula anymore. Home ec has gone the way of health class, where we learned you could get it from a doorknob.

  So my kids can’t sew. I’ve told Polly and Peter if they ever got stranded on a desert island, I might not be there to sew a button on for them. “But Ma,” they say, “if we’re stranded on a desert island, wouldn’t we be more worried about food?” Or “Ma, why would I care about a button? I’d go naked.”

  So this is what it’s come to. I know. I can’t teach my children anything they’re not absolutely sure they’ll need. Their clothes are disposable anyway. It’s like when my parents moved to Boca Raton. Something was different. Mom couldn’t put her finger on it. Then she needed new lifts on her sandals. That was it. There weren’t any shoe repair stores. She asked her tennis partner, “Where do you go in Boca to get your shoes repaired?”

  “We don’t repair shoes in Boca,” the woman replied. “We get new shoes.”

  I tell my son my mother used to darn socks. “What does ‘darn’ mean?” Peter says.

  I bring a darning egg to my zeitgeist class at Playwrights Horizon Theater School and ask my students what it is. “Maracas?” they say. “A shoe stretcher? Something to mash garlic with?”

  We went to Viola Wolff’s for social dancing, Helen Rigby’s for rhythm and tap, and Madame Svoboda for ballet. Our piano teachers were Cosmé McMoon and Blanche Solomon. Art lessons were on the top floor of the Museum of Modern Art, where your work was exhibited, and parents could say, “My daughter has something in the Museum of Modern Art.” We were dilettantes, a little good at a lot of things. I think my mother was raising us to marry kings. When I got too old for the Museum of Modern Art, on Wednesdays my grandmother would take painting lessons with me at the Albert Pels School of Art on West Seventy-first Street. Albert Pels, in his billowing blue smock, was usually working by the window on an epic canvas, copying Liberty Leading the People or The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus. His wife, Gloria, drifted from easel to easel offering encouragement and Pepsi in tiny dental-office cups. No matter what Gloria set up on the still-life table, my grandmother painted pink flowers in a blue-and-white vase. At home, with her little wooden box of oils, she painted pink flowers on the vase. After art school we’d bus to her apartment and play canasta, and she’d let me win.

  “You threw the game!” I’d protest.

  “No, light of my life. Would your Nana throw a game?”

  “You did! You have two queens! You could have picked the pack!”

  “No, Bubbaleh. With God as my witness, you won fair and square.”

  If my sister was there, we’d explore the dramatic potential of the fourth-floor incinerator. We’d throw rice and sog balls (gobs of wet toilet paper) out the living-room window until the doorman sleuthed it out and rang the bell. (Every New York generation throws different things out the window. My mother spit cherry pits. On the East Side they dumped pulp.) If my grandmother was cooking Chicken Fricassee with Meatballs, she would pinch off raw hamburger and feed it to us while we watched her work. I was crazy about the word “fricassee.” I was sure it had something to do with what a chicken did or what my grandmother did to the chicken. It wasn’t like any other word I knew. The closest I could come was Zuider Zee. Recipes I’ve tried suggest browning floured and seasoned chicken parts before you stew them. Floured chicken makes a fricassee sound in the pan when you brown it in butter. It splutters. Fricassee! Fricassee! The sauce was emplastic. In her silver well and tree it pooled gray-brown, not the color or texture of any other food we ate. But the meat was so tender it frayed, and the sauce so complex, there were no dull bites. Chicken today, once you get past the skin, tastes like packing pellets. Nana’s sauce worked its way to the bone.

  Going to my grandmother’s house also meant getting checked for a clean hankie because a lady should always carry a clean hankie. She tucked hers up the wrist of her sleeve. Aunt Lil stuffed hers down her cleavage. My mother kept one in her handbag, where it magnetized Pall Mall shreds. Though Dad still gets cotton ones by the dozen from his handkerchief man on the Lower East Side, ladies’ hankies have gone the way of “I beg your pardon.” Was it germ phobia? The romance of disposables? The time it takes to iron a gossamer roll-hemmed square? Gone with hankies is hankie behavior: daubing and weeping, fanning and wringing. The delicate patting of nostrils. Flailing au revoir from the passenger deck of the Liberté. The miracle of your mother never failing to find a clean corner she could rub into a point for stabbing soot out of your eye. Covering the hole while you shook a bottle of cool cologne.

  My grandmother had a friend she called the handkerchief thief. Amazing since Polly rarely let go of hers. She could extract a hankie from her right sleeve with her right hand. She could play canasta with it mashed in the palm she held her cards in. She needed it to laugh. She needed it to cry. It was her resuscitator, her visual italics, her flourish. It was Polly’s prop, something to say “Toodle-ooo!” with, what they call “business” on the stage. But in life it bought her time. You could concretize your thoughts while monitoring your hankie. You could pull yourself together.

  Except for Desdemona at the Met, I haven’t seen a woman use a handkerchief in years. Hankies were the raised pinkie of accessories. Hankie mannerisms would look goofy with ever-ready, proletarian, labor-free Kleenex.

  My grandmother wasn’t traditionally religious. She was, however, Orthodox superstitious, glatt superstitious, superstitious beyond black cats and open umbrellas and holding your breath when you passed a cemetery.

  “If you come back into the apartment because you forgot something, sit on the bed and count to ten.”

  “Always lay the opening
of a pillowcase away from the door.”

  “If you’re waiting for a bus and two go by filled, you can’t get on the third even if it’s empty, or something bad will happen.”

  “Never pick up a dropped coin unless it’s faceup. Except for quarters.”

  “Never hand a ring to a friend, or you’ll break the friendship.”

  “If a bird flies into your house, within two days someone you know will die.”

  “If you’re holding hands in the street and a lamppost is about to separate you, say, ‘Bread and butter.’ ”

  “Never put a needle on a bed.”

  “Stepping over someone’s legs will stunt his growth.”

  “Spit through your fingers three times to ward off the evil eye.”

  “Tie a red ribbon on a baby’s crib to ward off the evil eye.”

  “When giving a compliment, say, ‘Kine horah,’ to ward off the evil eye.”

  My grandfather refused to open a store in a building with a thirteenth floor. The elevator had to read 11, 12, 14, 15. If a reservation came in for a party of thirteen, he’d write “12 + 1” or “14 − 1” in the book. His son knocked wood three times before picking up the phone.

  Superstition is contagious. It’s the original quid pro quo: You don’t do this, and that won’t happen. You do do that, and this will happen. It isn’t like faith. With faith, you have to trust God. With superstition, it’s cause and effect. I didn’t walk under a ladder! I’m still alive! It worked!

  My grandmother had her own ideas about health too. She pushed her children in their strollers at six in the morning “before the air got used.” If you drank too much water, you had diabetes. She would take me to lunch and say, “Order anything you want, darling.” When I asked for a hamburger, she’d say, “The meat could be spoiled.” So I’d ask for chopped egg, and she’d say, “How do we know the eggs are fresh?” So I’d try for tuna, and she’d say, “What if the mayonnaise is rancid?” and I’d wind up with a grilled cheese.