The Dream by Harry Bernstein Page B

our empty front room that became a shop. Very little had changed with her since then, and it was obvious that she did not like the attention suddenly focused on her and by his question.
    ‘So how about you, young lady? What are you going to be now that you’re in America?’
    ‘I have no plans that I care to discuss,’ she said stiffly, then rose immediately from her chair and went out of the room with her head held high. There was a brief pause, then my mother said, ‘She’s trying to get a job as a dressmaker.’
    ‘And is that so hard?’ asked my grandfather.
    ‘For her, yes,’ answered my mother. ‘She won’t work in an ordinary dress shop. She’s turned down a few jobs already because they were in what she calls low-class places with low-class workers and customers. In England she worked in a fancy dress shop that catered to rich women. And that’s what she wants here. High class.’
    My mother spoke sadly. Rose was still a problem to her, refusing to talk to her most of the time and apparently still bearing a grudge against her for having turned the parlour into a shop. ‘I just don’t know what to do with her,’ she said.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ Aunt Lily put in. ‘She’ll get over it. She’ll meet some fellow soon and that’ll be the end of her silly ideas. Give her time.’
    ‘What about you?’ my grandfather asked. ‘Have you met a nice fellow yet?’
    This was an old story, Aunt Lily being without a fellow, considered an old maid already. She was the only one of the girls in her family who was not married. But things had changed. I noticed that Aunt Lily and Uncle Saul exchanged a swift glance. That glance was full of meaning about something the old man did not know. Nor did we ourselves have any inkling of what lay behind that look.
    Just then my father came striding into the room. He ignored everyone, including my grandfather, whom he had not seen yet. He seated himself at the table and spoke to my mother in his rough tone. ‘If there’s an egg in this house fry it for me and don’t take all morning.’
    It was not an unusual sort of greeting for him and it did not surprise anyone, though it cast a damper over the table and everyone became silent. My mother hastened to comply, and my grandmother scowled and showed her displeasure by turning her back on him.
    My grandfather had been watching him with an amused expression on his face. He spoke first. ‘Yankel,’ he said, ‘don’t you know your father?’
    My father’s face was twisted sideways. He was not looking at him. ‘Since when’, he said, ‘do I have a father?’
    The old man laughed. ‘When were you without a father?’ he said. ‘From the day you were born you had a father.’
    ‘So where have you been all the years since I was born? I don’t remember ever seeing you. Where were you to greet me when we came from England? Were you there? They tell me you were in New York. What the bloody ’ell were you doing in New York? Isn’t Chicago good enough for you any more?’
    The old man laughed again softly. ‘Yankel,’ he said, ‘you haven’t changed.’
    My father ignored this comment. He was quite obviously in a bad mood. ‘They tell me you were in New York on business. What sort of business have you got there? You don’t fix roofs any more?’
    ‘I’m too old for roofs,’ my grandfather said, ‘but roofs aren’t the only way to make a living. Here in America there are plenty of opportunities. They call it the land of opportunity. So why should I go crawling up roofs?’
    My father’s curiosity was sufficiently aroused for him to ask in an almost normal voice, ‘So what is it then you do?’
    My grandfather let out a chuckle this time. His eyes had narrowed and taken on an almost cunning expression. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I do what is best for me to do. I make a living. That is the most important thing for any man to do.’
    The normalcy hadn’t lasted long. The anger surged out of my father in a sudden