The Tell Read online

  the tell

  Copyright © 2018 by Linda I. Meyers

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

  Published June 5, 2018

  Printed in the United States of America

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63152-355-7

  E-ISBN: 978-1-63152-356-4

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018930510

  For information, address:

  She Writes Press

  1563 Solano Ave #546

  Berkeley, CA 94707

  Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

  She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

  Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

  My grandmother Eva Stone,

  My sons David, Jonathan, and Robert,

  My grandchildren Sjoen, Maple, and George:

  THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU.

  contents

  Author’s Foreword

  The Afikomen

  The Jewels in the Salt

  The Flowers

  When They Were Eight

  Negative Space

  Putting the Pieces Together

  Outside the Frame

  To the Mountain

  A Photo Left Out in the Sun

  Dr. Zhivago

  Had I Won at Bingo

  Dead Serious

  Feng Shui in the Shtetl

  Sharks and Other Perils

  Running It Over Again

  The Hand Off

  My Name Is Linda

  The Spring Line

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  author’s foreword

  A tell is an unconscious reveal given under psychological stress. The poker player who recognizes an opponent’s tell, perhaps the twitch of the eye or the soft intake of breath, is best situated to win the game or, at the least, to mitigate her losses. A tell is also an archaeological mound containing the accumulated remains of human occupation and abandonment over many centuries. And a telltale or tattletale is a child who reports others’ wrongdoings or reveals their secrets.

  This memoir is a tell in all of its meanings. It is a compilation of standalone essays that together trace my journey out of the tell my family inhabited and through the restrictive and chauvinistic culture of the forties and fifties, towards emancipation and self-realization. The essays about the generations that came before me are written in third person. Once I’m able to speak for myself, the book moves into first person. I have selected only those episodes from my life that I believe to be turning points and best tell this story; therefore, large sections of time are intentionally left out.

  Louise and Linda age four

  the afikomen

  My cousin Louise and I were tired of sitting “nicely” at my grandmother Pauline’s seder table and waiting for Uncle Harry to plow through the entire Passover Haggahdah. At some undefined moment, we gave each other a knowing eye and slipped under the table to wait it out. Every few minutes, I pulled on my father’s pant leg, and he handed me down some matzah and celery sticks—impossible to eat without a loud crunch. We tried to stifle our giggles, but my mother heard them and gave us little kicks that said quiet down. When it was time to ask the first of the four seder questions, we resurfaced.

  “Why is this night different from other nights?” Louise’s little brother Allen would say in his singsong voice.

  The question I wanted to ask was not in the Haggahdah. I wanted to know why would that night be the same as any other night? Meaning my parents’ inevitable fight on the way home, the silence in the morning, the pots banging over breakfast, the blowup, the slammed door, the threats. I’d come to know the pattern, but I didn’t understand the cause.

  The best part of the Passover seder was the search at the end for the afikomen—the hidden matzah. Louise was always excited to find the matzah and get the money, but I was more into the search—the license to rifle through drawers and closets in my grandmother’s bedroom. The prize for me was not the money, but clues to my father’s past—snapshots, postcards, mementoes, anything that might answer the why.

  From the time I could read fairy tales and dream of happily ever after, I wanted to understand my parents. Who had they been before they met? What had attracted them to each other? What mitigating circumstances in their lives might explain the disaster that was their marriage, and the sadness that was my legacy? Like Nancy Drew, I was always on the hunt for clues to solve the mystery. I learned to look in unlikely places and to listen for the unspoken truth. I became expert at reading facial expressions and watching for the tell—the unconscious wrinkle of the nose or raise of the eyebrow that gave away the lie. If I could understand the why, I might figure out the how—how to fix it.

  After the afikomen was found and Louise collected her two dollars, we slid back under the table where I listened to the grownups tell their unabridged versions of the past. My imagination brought the stories I heard to life. Together with the scenes I witnessed, books I read, and movies I saw, I constructed a narrative that helped me understand my family, and the people who came before us.

  the jewels in the salt

  Saratoga Avenue ran into Livonia, and Livonia intersected with Amboy. Once you turned right on Amboy, the club was only a few storefronts away. It was after dinner, and the Brooklyn streets were clogged with kids getting in their last game of stickball and peddlers wrapping up their wares for the night. He wove his way through the glut, careful not to brush into anyone or step in any horse droppings. He wore the black pinstripe—Isaac, the tailor, had pegged the pants exactly how he told him, but the Chinaman had overstarched the collar of the shirt, and he had to keep stretching his neck to loosen it.

  He had taken his father’s gold cufflinks for the night. He’d wished she’d give them to him already. He felt like an ass every time, trying to dig them out of the box of kosher salt. That was his mother’s idea of a place for safekeeping. He was sure there was some sort of irony to the jewels in the salt, but he’d long ago stopped trying to figure her out. He concentrated again on tonight and getting to the club. That’s where the action was going to be.

  He was walking fast, but not so fast that he couldn’t take a minute to check himself out in the window of the butcher shop. He wedged his image between the hanging sides of beef. He had a strong chin, dark, wavy hair, and what they call “bedroom” eyes. He knew when he got to the club that she’d be waiting for him to show and trying to act as if she couldn’t care less.

  Having served and cleaned up dinner, the women on Saratoga were finally released from the kitchen. They sat, lining the stoops in flowered housedresses, stockings rolled down to their ankles. George thought they looked like a bunch of overpotted plants—Brownsville shrubbery—with not enough light and too little water. He had to look closely to see that some of them were no older than he was. It didn’t matter, because, once they married and the kids started to come, they became indentured servants to the next generation. Look at them. What a shame! They could sit there from today to tomorrow with their hair in curlers, and they’d still be no one you’d want to wake up to in the morning. His mother never sat on the stoop. He had to give her that.

  Usually he’d stop and give them the time of day, but he was in a hurry. Gussie, the one who’d had to put her oldest in an orphanage, yelled after him. “Georgie, how are ya? How you doin’, Ge
orgie? How’s your mother? So beautiful, your mother. Gorgeous, I’m telling you. Such a pity about your father. What is it, ten years? You were eight, weren’t ya, Georgie?” And then Gussie would turn to Edna to help make her case. “Edna, look at Georgie. Look at him. Isn’t he the spittin’ image of Louie? You look just like your father, Georgie. He’d be proud.”

  That’s what they said to his face, but, as soon as they thought he was out of earshot, they’d whisper how he’d gone bad, and how Pauline must be pulling her hair out watching him run the streets. “That’s the problem,” Gussie would say to Edna. “She let him run the streets.”

  “What was she supposed to do?” asked Edna, “She’s working to make ends meet, taking care of her sister’s kids. You heard about her sister Sarah. She has time? What would you do, Gussie? Ah, who am I asking? I know what you’d do. You did it.”

  “Yeah, so,” said Gussie. “Better he should run the streets.” And by then they’d forgotten Georgie, and they’d argue until one or the other would go back inside and slam the door.

  And so they’d serve him up—first a smile and then a whack. He didn’t care; at least he was talked about. Hey, he’d rather be a light than a lamppost. He’d read that somewhere. Where had he read that? Some book … he couldn’t remember. He’d quit school when he was sixteen. It’s not that he wasn’t smart. He was plenty smart. He could have stayed. Graduated. But time was money. He wasn’t reading books, but he was learning how to turn nickels into quarters and quarters into dollars. He was learning that it didn’t matter what you know but who you know, and he was a fast learner. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but he still wished he could remember that book.

  When he hit Pitkin, he turned right and walked under the El. He passed Shlomo’s Deli and reached into the barrel, grabbing a sour pickle. He shook off the juice so it wouldn’t drip on his shirt. Shlomo looked out at him, raised his arm, and rubbed his two fingers together, making the sign of money. This was their joke. He’d been stealing pickles from Shlomo since he was six. He smiled at Shlomo, waved, and kept walking. Shlomo threw up his hands—he never knew what to do about Georgie.

  As he got closer to the club, George became Gerry, the name that all the Dukes called him. There were two cellar clubs on Sutter, one new one where the guys were still trying to figure out what to call themselves, and then the Sutter Kings, a bunch of wops, one chink, and three white guys lucky to have somewhere to go on a Saturday night. Some of the Dukes worried about the Kings. Sammy in particular would go three blocks out of his way rather than walk down Sutter. Sammy was an ass. “What are they gonna do to you, Sammy?” George would ask. “Kill you? They lay a hand on you and they’ll get whacked by Lepke. They ain’t gonna mess with Lepke.”

  If Lepke had you in his pocket, you could walk all over Brooklyn, and nobody would touch you. Maybe George was in Lepke’s pocket, but no one knew how he got there. They didn’t ask. They were afraid to know, so they chalked it up to his charm. “Hey, come on. What are you, kiddin’ me? This guy could charm the skin off a snake.” Then they’d all agree that even without Lepke, Gerry still deserved to be their president. If it weren’t for him, the Amboy Dukes would be nothing, just another bunch of Brooklyn bums trying to look like big shots.

  When he turned onto Amboy, he could hear Jimmy Dorsey blasting from the record player. He saw the crowd hanging by the door of the club. Initiation into the Dukes was like taking communion; you got to pick the name you wanted. George had picked Gerry. No one knew why about that either. They thought he would have picked Louie like his father, but Lepke was Louie. He wanted to be Gerry, so who was going to argue.

  Stella was standing near the railing with Mike. George liked Stella. She would have been pretty if she’d have left herself alone, but the dress was too tight, the heels were too high, and the hair was too big. By the time she’d finished with herself, she looked like a floozy.

  “Hi, Gerry. Where you going tonight?” she purred. “Hey Mikey, get a load of Gerry. Why don’t you ever wear a suit, Mikey? You’d look good in a suit, but not as good as Gerry.”

  She was playing to him. For two weeks, she’d been trying to get in the door, but Gerry kept telling her the place was too crowded. “Maybe if you cut your hair you could fit in the room,” he’d tease her, but he really wished he could get her to tone it down. She was wasting herself.

  He looked over at Mike. “What do you say, Mike, we got room for Stella tonight?” Stella backed her ass into Mike’s hand until he smiled and said, “Okay.”

  The Dukes paid Manny the landlord fifty bucks a month. Manny was charging more than he should, but Gerry told the guys it was still a deal. Manny didn’t bother them. The tenants complained about the racket till all hours, and Manny ignored them. He knew the Dukes were in with Lepke, and they could have paid him nothing, and there would have been nothing he could do about it. Gerry believed you get what you pay for. He wasn’t going to shaft Manny. Fair was fair.

  The club was packed. It was late enough that the guys had turned down the lights, and the PRIVACY sign was already up on the door to the back room, but he spotted her immediately. She was in the corner, talking to Sammy. He breathed a sigh of relief. The pinstripe wasn’t going to be for nothing.

  He’d first met her the week before at the Palladium when he’d gone to watch the marathon. He was a good dancer, but he was damned if he was going to dance for hours and hours just to raise money for some charity. He’d rather put his feet up and write a check, but two of the Dukes were dancing, and he’d promised them he’d come watch. He saw her out there. The band was playing a jitterbug. And her partner was throwing her over his head and pulling her between his legs. She was good. They were probably the best dancers on the floor. He asked Zig if he knew who she was, and Zig said her name was Tillie and she lived over on Schenck Avenue. She didn’t look like she lived on Schenck. Schenck was on the border between Brownsville and East New York. “Yeah,” Zig said, “she lives on Schenck, and she went to Jefferson High School.” Gerry didn’t think he’d ever seen her at school, or he would’ve remembered. Zig said she used to go out with Big Al, but he laughed and guessed that Al wasn’t big enough, ’cause she’d dumped him.

  When she finally gave it up and walked off the dance floor, he’d gone over. “I’m Gerry,” he said, “and you are one hell of a dancer.” She thanked him and said he didn’t need to introduce himself; she knew who he was. When he asked how, she just smiled. She had the kind of beauty that didn’t shout out at you. Gerry thought that even though she lived on Schenck, she still looked like money. She said her name was Tessie.

  “I was Tillie when I was a baby. Now, I’m Tessie. I like Tessie better. You can understand that, Georgie, can’t you?” She gave him a coy smile. He invited her to come down to the club on Saturday night. He promised her it was the best gig in Brooklyn, and he’d give her a good time. She said she’d see—she might have something else to do.

  “She’ll make it,” he’d said to Zig when they were getting into the car, but he wasn’t that sure.

  He waited at the bar until he thought she was finally tired of pretending he wasn’t there, and then he walked over and handed her a drink. She switched her cigarette to her other hand and took it. Her nonchalance was the draw. The other girls were wearing tight dresses. They kept bending down to straighten their seams, but Tessie didn’t have to work to look good. She was wearing tan slacks that draped loosely over her hips. She had on a green silk blouse with a neckline that dipped deep enough that you could see a little lace peeping out from her bra.

  “Thanks for the drink.”

  “You are very, very welcome,” he said, giving her the smile that usually knocked them dead. And then he waited. He’d learned that the girls couldn’t stand the silence, and, if you waited, they’d do all the talking, but she said nothing. She sipped her drink, and when her eyes began to wander around the room, he panicked and started throwing her the story about the club and how the Amboy Dukes were the best cl
ub in Brooklyn. He was trying not to give her the spiel, but she was making him lose his calm, and he was coming up empty. He was about to tell her to piss off when she put her cigarette out in her drink, handed him the glass, and politely excused herself. He watched her walk away and thought, This girl is a dish. She’s got enough style and class, if she wanted, she could be one of Lepke’s girls.

  He’d ask Zig where on Schenck she lived, and he’d send her flowers. He wasn’t giving up so easy.

  And that was how George met Tillie, Gerry met Tessie, my father met my mother.

  Grandparents, Eva & Harry, Wedding

  the flowers

  Eva stood at the sink scrubbing the scales off the fish. She did not look down at her work; her hands had long ago memorized the task. She concentrated on the spidery pattern of cracks on the tiles in front of her. From behind, Eva looked like a young woman—her back was straight, her hair was mostly black, and the bulbous veins that ran up her legs from too much time on her feet were hidden under her stockings—but when she turned, her face gave away her age. Years of furrowing her brow had burrowed deep lines of skepticism between her eyes. Pursing her lips had drawn fine little lines that radiated out from the corners of her mouth like a child’s drawing of the sun.

  Eva accepted her looks. She was forty-two, after all, and had never been a beauty. Believing that waste was a sin, she did what she could with what she had. Mineral oil was her elixir. Each night she poured three tablespoons into a cup—two she drank to squelch the heartburn, and the third she rubbed on her face to smooth out the lines and give her skin a youthful luster. It was the nightly application of mineral oil that made her skin like satin, but it was her thoughts of Malconson that gave her the young girl’s blush.

  Eva knew that Malconson thought she was a fine-looking woman. She could tell by the way he peeked at her over his cards and reached out to touch her arm when she offered him tea or another piece of mandel bread.