The Tell Read online

  The building next door also had six floors. From her apartment, Pauline could look up and see the window from which her sister Sarah had taken a leap, or she could look down and see where Louie had dropped in his tracks. If she looked across the street, she saw the Catholic orphanage where she’d threatened to put George since the day Louie died. George wished he didn’t believe her, but he did. He saw it by the way she didn’t look at him. His sister Laura told him not to cry. It was just that he looked so much like his father that when their mother looked at him, her heart broke even more. George didn’t know how to feel about that; if it was good or if it was bad. He looked across the street. The nuns in their habits looked like bats. George tried to stay out of sight. He didn’t want to remind his mother of what she didn’t want to remember, but when “one more mouth to feed” became his middle name, he stopped running home and started running away.

  The picture of Pauline was taken a few months after Louie died. She is wearing a white shirt, maybe silk, open at the collar. Her wedding band hangs on a thin, gold chain around her neck. Her elbow rests on a table, and one finger touches her cheek, giving her a look of poise and puzzlement. Her thick, dark hair is pulled back from her face. She is an artist’s sketch with her high cheekbones, perfect nose, and sensuous mouth, but grief has frozen her expression and taken the light out of her eyes, and the picture has no depth.

  Who knew why Louie died? He was thirty-four, the picture of health. It was a hernia, a simple operation, nothing. The doctor said he could do it in his sleep. Pauline wonders if maybe he did. Why else would her Louie walk out of the hospital one day and drop dead the next? Kaplan, Sarah’s husband, stricken and angry for his own inexplicable loss, said that Louie was an idiot; who goes bowling right after a surgery? Pauline told Kaplan he’s meshugah, that’s why her sister jumped out the window. Who could live with such a meshuganah? For the hundredth time she explained to her brother-in-law that Louie had not gone bowling; he’d gone around the corner like always to Al’s bar for a bisel schnapps. She’d asked Al. Al said that Louie was fine. He drank his drink. He walked out the door. He turned the corner and dropped like a stone.

  If you asked the yentas in the neighborhood, they’d tell you it was Pauline. They’d say that Louie was not a schlemiel; he knew to stay in bed after an operation. They’d say that Louie went to Al’s to get away from Pauline. They’d say Pauline was a beauty without a heart, and Louie was a devil with a wandering eye.

  George, eight years old, trying to make sense out of no sense, would tell you that his father died because his mother was right: he was a “no-good kid.” Why else would his father leave him? They’d had big plans. They were going to go fishing in Sheepshead Bay. They were going to go to Ebbets Field to see the Dodgers beat the Giants. They were going to go to the playground after dinner and pitch a few, and now nothing but nothing. That’s what George would’ve told you then; now, at twenty-two, having learned to take the blame for nothing and to never admit to anything, he would tell you whatever it was you wanted to hear.

  The morning of the day Louie died, George got up and dressed for school. He put on his shirt with his knickers. He wanted long pants. He told his father that all the boys in third grade had long pants already. Louie, advocating for his son, suggested to his wife that maybe it was time. Pauline told Louie that the last time she’d put George in long pants, he’d played in the vacant lot, fallen in the dirt, ripped the knees—and that was the end of the long pants.

  “Your son thinks you’re a prince and not a painter. Tell him that money doesn’t grow on trees. Tell him how many hours you have to paint Mrs. Schmidt’s apartment to buy him one thing after another.”

  Louie looked at George and gave him a hug and a kiss and whispered loud enough for Pauline to hear, that soon, the two of them would take a walk over to Pitkin Avenue to the haberdashery so George could pick out a new pair of long pants. George gave his father a hug, Pauline gave Louie a smile, secretly happy that Louie could give George the love that she couldn’t muster for a son she didn’t want.

  Pauline remembered how, in the second month when the blood didn’t come, she’d begun to pull her hair out. Her Louie already worked till all hours to pay the rent and buy the food. She already had a beautiful child, her daughter Laura. Gertie said Pauline should go to shul and ask God for help. Pauline told Gertie she’d sooner ask a gangster for a loan. As far as Pauline was concerned, God was in it for himself. If Gertie didn’t believe her, she should have been on the deck of the boat coming over and seen how two mothers with dead babies had climbed out of steerage, gone to the rail, and dropped their hearts into the sea.

  “God,” she told Gertie, “didn’t lift a finger. If you ask me, God makes you miserable so you should go to shul, rock back and forth like an idiot, bend at the knee, and ask him for forgiveness. God collects prayers the way the mob collects money, so he can sit on his ass like a macher. If God was less interested in being a big shot and more interested in helping a Jew, he’d get off his toches and make life a little easier for my Louie.”

  Gertie shook her head and smiled at Pauline. “You wait; when the third month comes and still no blood, you’ll go to shul.” The third month came. Pauline didn’t go to God; she went next door to her sister Sarah.

  Pauline climbed the steps to the sixth floor and walked into her sister’s apartment. Sarah was sitting the way she always sat: in a housedress, with a net over her hair, stockings rolled down around her ankles, humming a Russian song. Sarah remembered the tune, but the words were lost. Pauline looked around the kitchen and felt her sister’s despair. The dishes from last night, from this morning, were piled in the sink. The pots, with a soup—maybe lentil, maybe chicken, who could tell?—sat on the stove. After Ruthie was born, Sarah was okay; it was when Herbie came that Sarah fell apart.

  Pauline grabbed a chair and sat knee to knee, trying to make Sarah look at her. She took both of her sister’s hands and held them in her lap.

  “Sarah,” she whispered, “stop the humming. Look at me. I have a problem, Sarah. Maybe you can help?”

  Sarah came out of her reverie and looked at her sister. “What? What, Pauline? Is it Mama?”

  “No. Sarah. You forget? Mama died before we took the boat.”

  “Oh,” Sarah nodded, remembering again. “Oy! Mama,” she began to whimper.

  “No, Sarahala don’t cry. Mama’s good where she is. Mama is smiling. Mama is happy,” Pauline said, comforting her.

  Sarah, reassured, glanced up and looked at her sister. “So what, Pauline?”

  “Sarah,” Pauline asked, “after Ruthie, after Herbie, there was another, yes?” Sarah nodded. “So, what happened? Where did it go?”

  “It went.”

  “Yes, but how?”

  “The piano.”

  “What, Sarah? You’re talking crazy. What’re you talking, the piano?”

  “The piano,” Sarah reiterated. “I jumped off the piano, the blood came, and that was that. Shoyn. Finished. Done.”

  What Pauline never got around to telling Louie, she kept telling George: how she should have listened to her sister and jumped off the piano. Five years later, when Sarah took the leap, Pauline wondered if maybe Sarah had been pregnant again, but that this time the piano didn’t work.

  George tightened the leather strap around his books, gave his mother a quick peck on the cheek, and tried not to run over his sister going out the door. Already late, he took the shortcut through the lot. The lot was an eyesore in the neighborhood. Everything that used to be something had been dumped in the lot. The debris of local life was strewn over the square block of dirt and sand: broken radiators and pipes, prams without wheels, rags that used to be clothes. On hot days the garbage stank in the sun, and on wet days it floated in the mud.

  Like most kids, George went where he wasn’t supposed to go. He scavenged the rubble for toys and treasures. He found two pennies and a condom. He pocketed the pennies but could find no use for a broken balloon. He
figured by now he was late, so he ran like crazy until his foot caught in some wire and he fell on his back. When he picked himself up he saw that the back pocket of his pants had a small rip. He tried to pinch it together with his fingers. He knew if his mother saw, it was the end of the long pants.

  When he got across the lot, he ran the two blocks to school. It was five minutes before the bell. The kids were still running around the yard. He saw little Eddie and Manny and coaxed them into a fast game of Johnny-on-the pony. George was a wiry, scrappy kid. Maybe he weighed sixty, seventy pounds at the most. It’s not that he didn’t eat—he ate everything in sight, but he burned it up like kindling. Pauline would tell you she couldn’t put meat on his bones. The yentas would think she didn’t feed him.

  Manny bent over, put his head against the wall, and braced himself for the first jumper. The kids, one on top of the other, took the leap and mounted Manny. George was the last to jump on. He walked back, took a running start and leapt like a tiger. It would have been good except that Iggy, the kid in the middle, couldn’t hang on, and the whole pile went down on top of George. When he got up and brushed himself off, the small rip had become a big tear, and he knew that was that for the long pants. He felt guilty, not for the pants, but for his father. His father had stood up for him, and George had let him down. What could Louie say to Pauline now?

  George dragged his feet walking home. He was in no hurry to face the music. When he entered his building, he knew something wasn’t right. There was a loud, screeching sound ricocheting off the wall. George wanted to turn and run, but he kept climbing the steps. When he got to his landing, he saw people spilling out of his apartment. He wove his way through the crowd towards the eerie sound. No one seemed to see him. When he walked into the dining room, he saw his father lying on his back on the table and realized that the eerie sound was coming out of his mother’s throat.

  His sister Laura saw him. She came over and put her arm around his shoulder and pulled him close. Laura was only eleven months older than George, but he trusted her more than anything, because everything she said was true.

  “Daddy is dead,” she whispered. George looked at his father, eyes closed, skin gray like a fish, and he felt warm pee run down his leg. He rushed from the room and hid under the bed. Later, after only a few people were left—his uncle Kaplan, Gertie from downstairs, and his cousins Herbie and Ruthie—Laura coaxed him out from under the bed. His clothes were stuck to him, and he smelled like the bathroom in the basement at school. Laura told him to undress and put him in a bath. When he was done and all cleaned up, she combed his hair and told him to go into the dining room and give his mother a kiss. He wanted to tell his mother about the pants and tell her that it was okay if she didn’t want to buy him another pair. He approached her on tiptoes, trying not to look at his father on the table. Pauline picked her head up off Louie’s body and looked at her son but saw nothing.

  Later that night, the undertaker came, covered Louie’s body with a cloth, put him on a cart, and tried to wheel him out the door. George and Laura peeked out from the bedroom. They saw their mother holding on to the cart as if it were a lifeboat in the sea. Kaplan was begging Pauline to let go. Finally, he grabbed her waist from behind and pulled while the undertakers pried her fingers loose. Louie left on the cart, the door slammed, and Pauline collapsed in a heap. Laura ran out from the bedroom and lay down beside her mother. Pauline put her arm around her daughter and held her like a teddy bear.

  George, tears streaming down his face, circled his mother and his sister, trying to find a place to fit in, but they were tight like a fist. He gave up, walked out of the hall, and went into his parents’ bedroom. He opened the door to Louie’s closet where he found the humidor with the tobacco. He found the pipe Louie smoked, the one he’d put under George’s nose, laughing and telling him to take a whiff. He pulled a pair of Louie’s pants off the hanger, put them on over his pajamas, and shuffled to his room. He climbed into Laura’s bed and waited for her to come in and lie down beside him.

  The next day they walked behind the hearse in Beth David Cemetery. It was cold. The wind was blowing. Icy pellets hung on the trees like stalactites. Laura held him close to keep him warm and to warm herself. Pauline, already frozen, was impervious to the cold. She wore a black dress with a high collar. Her coat was unbuttoned, and it flapped in the wind like the wings of a hawk. George dropped Laura’s hand and ran up to his mother. He took her hand between his palms and touched it to his cheek. It was icy cold. He did what his father would have done. He rubbed it and kissed it. Pauline seemed unaware. When George let go, her arm snapped to her side like a limb off a dead tree. George knew his father was in the coffin, but he’d no idea where his mother had gone. He left her side and went back to walk with his sister.

  George watched as they lowered his father into the ground. He looked at Pauline and saw his mother’s eyes widen in horror as each shovelful of earth hit the casket. The rabbi turned to George, as the man of the house, and asked him if he wanted to take his turn. George left Laura, walked up to the grave, and with both hands lifted the shovel. It was too heavy for a little boy, and it teetered as he tried to bring the earth to the grave. George heard the hollow clump as the dirt hit the coffin. He believed then, if he hadn’t before, that he’d had a hand in burying his father. He dropped the shovel and ran to Pauline, wrapping his arms around her legs. She lifted her arms; they hovered over his shoulders, a wish for a gesture she could not make. The chill wind blew, and George ran back to Laura to keep warm.

  They were up to dessert when Gerry finished his story. He ordered for them both—two cheesecakes. Tessie liked that Gerry took charge. Gerry liked that Tessie was a good listener. Gerry wondered if he should have left out the part about peeing his pants? Nah, he thought, what the hell, he was only eight.

  When the meal was over and they got in the car, he pulled her to him and gave her a deep, long kiss. She was hot, so he took liberties and reached his hand into her pants. His finger traced a deep scar.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “That’s a story,” she said.

  “Well tell me,” he said, knowing that she would be flattered by his interest. “I showed you mine; now you show me yours,” he said with a laugh.

  She leaned back on the seat and lit a cigarette.

  “Okay,” she said, and she began where it started, way back in 1926. Her Grandfather Sol had miscalculated. The ladies weren’t buying the bloomers. He couldn’t understand—how could they stop wearing bloomers? Who knew with women? He asked his wife Bessie if she still wore bloomers.

  “What? You want to know if I wear bloomers? Maybe if you came home and went to the bed the way you get up and go to the factory, you’d know if I wear bloomers.”

  “Yeah, Bessie.” Sol was disgusted hearing the same old complaint. “I won’t go to the factory. I’ll stay home. You go to work; you make the money.”

  Bessie went back to whatever it was she was doing. There was no point in arguing with Sol. There was never any point in arguing with Sol.

  Sol kept puzzling. How could they go without bloomers? He made a good garment. It made no sense. Never willing to take no for an answer, he figured any day there’d be a rush to buy, so he began to make more when he should have made less. Sol was running after his own tail. The girls in the factory got irritated. Sol was cutting salaries, laying off workers but demanding more output. Finally, it dawned on Sol what was going on. The mobsters had begun to infiltrate the shop and agitate the girls. The word “union” became a familiar sound. The wise guys made a visit. They told Sol that for a small donation, they’d quiet the girls and make sure the ladies were wearing Sol’s bloomers. Sol gave them what for and told them to get the hell out of his shop. Bessie, alarmed, said that maybe Sol should be a little more charitable.

  “What are you, meshugah? You give those lousy good-for-nothings a dime, and they’ll want a dollar.

  As his blood pressure went up, his pitch began to ri
se. He banged his fist on the table.

  “Nobody, you hear Bessie, nobody sucks the blood out of Sol Stone. They want money from Sol, they can come to work. I’ll give them a job. They can pack the boxes, sweep the floor, kiss my ass. You hear me, Bessie? Not one dime do they get from Sol Stone.”

  Sol, trying not to agitate the girls—they shouldn’t say he played favorites—laid Eva off. When Eva asked Sol how she was supposed to feed his grandchildren with no job, Sol told her to tell his son to get off his ass and go to work. Eva came home in a panic. She asked Harry to talk to his father. Harry, happier for Sol’s troubles than he was worried for his own, told Eva there was no point in talking to deaf ears, and maybe his wife should stop making brisket and start making chicken. Eva told Harry that the difference between here and the poor house wasn’t a brisket. Harry went back to his chair, and Eva went to Heshy’s Bakery and took a job delivering.

  At five in the morning, Eva would get up. In the dark, before the heat came up in the radiator, she would step onto the cold linoleum, quietly tiptoe to the bathroom, get dressed, put on her blue wool coat, and go the ten blocks to Heshy’s. She was happy that it was still dark; the yentas shouldn’t see her. At Heshy’s it was warm. The bakers had been up since four, and the ovens were going. The bread, the challah, and the bagels, golden brown, were already coming out of the ovens. The smells reminded her of the smells in the shtetl on Friday morning when the women were getting ready for the Sabbath.

  Heshy would tell Eva to sit and give her a little coffee to sip. He would break off the twist on top of challah; she should have a little bite before she went out in the cold. He would fill the basket for the first run.