Last Respects by Jerome Weidman Page A

servants. One of the servants the Weitz family had was known on the block as a “fat stupid Polish slob,” who was in fact their only servant. She cooked, she cleaned, and scrubbed—there were some smart alecks on the block who said she did other things for Dr. Weitz—and she did the Weitz family laundry.
    “Could you get your girl to wash and iron my uniform?” I said.
    “What’s the matter with your old lady?” George said. “She’s all of a sudden a cripple?”
    “No, but she’s busy on Tuesday,” I said.
    “Doing what?” George said.
    “What difference does it make?” I said. “She washes my uniform on Friday for the Saturday meeting. But this is for Wednesday. She can’t do it. She’s busy on Tuesday.”
    “Doing what?” George said again. “Putting double hemstitches on the new Passover line at Meister’s Matzoh Bakery?”
    It was the sort of thing George Weitz was always saying. He was known on East Fourth Street as a smart-ass. I’d never heard of Meister’s Matzoh Bakery. My guess was that neither had George. But things went on inside his head. Whatever they were, he enjoyed them. George made up those things inside his head, then he said them out loud. But he was not a bad guy. Besides, he was my reader-receiver on the Morse team.
    “It’s just the breeches and the shirt,” I said. “My neckerchief is still clean. I could bring them over after school and you could put them in your family laundry. What the heck, George, your girl won’t know the difference.” It seems odd to me now that on East Fourth Street we said heck when we meant hell.
    “Okay,” George said. “But don’t tell the Feds.”
    It was a George joke. Not funny, perhaps, but part of what a stand-up comic would call his routine. It was the sort of thing he always signed off with. Don’t take any wooden nickels. See you in church. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Keep punching. Now it was don’t tell the Feds. I didn’t tell anybody. I just went home after school and dug out my khaki breeches and shirt, and my mother caught me.
    “What are you doing?” she said. I told her. “No, you’re not,” she said. “In my family, if anything has to be washed, I’m the one that does it.”
    Even now I wonder if she said it with irritation or with pride. Anyway, she did it. On Wednesday night, therefore, when I met George Weitz on the corner of Avenue C and Fourth for the walk to the Hannah H. Lichtenstein House, the crease in my breeches moved crisply an inch or two ahead of my legs, the starch in the collar of my khaki shirt was eating away at my Adam’s apple, and my blue neckerchief looked like the sky over East Fourth Street on a hot summer day.
    “I thought you were bringing over your uniform for our girl,” George said as we started up Avenue C toward Ninth. “What happened?”
    “My mother changed her mind,” I said. “She found the time yesterday to wash it.”
    “Meister’s Matzoh Bakery probably gave her a day off,” George said.
    I could see where Meister’s Matzoh Bakery, whatever that was, had moved into George’s head and settled down for a long stay. It was going to be the joke of the week, maybe month.
    “Be funny later,” I said. “Now just please concentrate on Morse. We gotta win this thing.”
    “We’ll win it,” George said. “None of these shmohawks from uptown can handle a Morse flag the way you and I can.”
    The “you and I” did not send me. George Weitz was not in my league. But I decided to let it go. He had more than a cockamaymey sense of humor. He had a temper. This was no time for a fight. Besides, let’s face it, George was the second best reader-receiver in the troop. He was entitled to say “you and I.” Suppose he had said “I and you”?
    “Maybe they can and maybe they can’t,” I said. “We still have Mr. Krakowitz to worry about.”
    “You’re not kidding,” George said. “That jerk. Jesus.”
    I wondered about George’s vehemence. I was not