to my grandmother that he had had a nosh and like fake whipped cream, it made him “naw-shus.”
It would be unfair to say that Jack was a compulsive nosher, that he noshed every week, or every month, routinely. He did not. But when the fever came upon him, whether on a snowy day in February with one lonely woman seeking to kill an hour in a store before she went home to her family, or a spring day when he felt charmed by the turn of a customer’s shoulder as she shrugged into a coat, then the desire for a nosh overcame him.
Jack’s easy confessions did not strike Willy or me as odd because my grandmother assured us that the incident meant nothing, like passing a little water. But my father, my brother and I were under strict rules not to hint to my mother about these noshes. “It’s a don’t-tell,” Bubby warned us.
“Would I hurt Lil, would I hurt her smallest finger?” Jack protested as he disappeared into the dark room where we stored the beds and folding tables, took a quick wash with hot water from the tea kettle, and changed his underwear. If forced to take a lie detector test, he could pass easily over whether he had been unfaithful. “No,” he’d answer with resounding conviction. “I love my wife.” Which he did. And my mother, who didn’t understand the word
paradox
or its implications, agreed.
3
Shanda, Shanda
IF BUBBY’S DAYS belonged to her restaurant, to the endless stream of customers, friends, neighbors, her nights belonged to me. Her past was inexplicably wed to the present and during the winter months when it grew dark early and the last visitor left our apartment, Bubby suggested that we roll our folding beds into the dining room.
A dark alcove, not wired for electricity, led off the front room. Possibly it had been intended as a bathroom, an idea that the landlord may have abandoned to save money. Instead he installed two toilets in the hall on each floor of the five-story building. The unlit alcove inside our apartment held a skinny closet with shelves for my father’s laundered shirts and his vast assortment of ties. Next to them was a chest of drawers with Lil’s finery: her chemises, always called shimmys, her satiny one-piece undergarments named teddies and her silk stockings. Against the darkest wall stood my brother’s cot and a double folding bed for Bubby and me. The springs of our bed were soft and the mattress mushy, and a supporting iron bar under its center had lost some of its screws so that it slid from side to side capriciously. Lil, skillful with the Singer sewing machine, made a curtain from some drapery material to hide these sorry beds whose condition deteriorated with the years.
Bubby’s historic feather comforter, the perrina that she had brought with her from Odessa, had a decorated cutout in its center trimmed with cotton lace. Feathers escaped nightly through this cutout. In the coldest weather we piled wool blankets and even our overcoats over it. My grandmother, strongly attached to the perrina, called it her “wedding blanket.” Feeling it close to her skin brought her ever-flowing recollections of her dead husband, now gone for decades.
My fifth year had significance for me. Not only because I first began to help Lil with the words of songs, but because I tried to muddle my way through the meaning of time. My brother, Willy, always taken for younger than I, was two years older. My father had passed thirty: thirty, a vast age because I considered someone sixteen fully grown and someone ten almost out of childhood. And my grandmother related stories that happened before she gave birth to my father with the same passion, the anxiety, the rage and despair, as if the oncoming tragedy occurred on a day of the week before.
Other children of immigrant grandparents or parents may have heard tales of shtetl—village—life, marked by isolation and rigid religious ceremonies. But my grandparents came from a cosmopolitan city, a bustling trading seaport
It would be unfair to say that Jack was a compulsive nosher, that he noshed every week, or every month, routinely. He did not. But when the fever came upon him, whether on a snowy day in February with one lonely woman seeking to kill an hour in a store before she went home to her family, or a spring day when he felt charmed by the turn of a customer’s shoulder as she shrugged into a coat, then the desire for a nosh overcame him.
Jack’s easy confessions did not strike Willy or me as odd because my grandmother assured us that the incident meant nothing, like passing a little water. But my father, my brother and I were under strict rules not to hint to my mother about these noshes. “It’s a don’t-tell,” Bubby warned us.
“Would I hurt Lil, would I hurt her smallest finger?” Jack protested as he disappeared into the dark room where we stored the beds and folding tables, took a quick wash with hot water from the tea kettle, and changed his underwear. If forced to take a lie detector test, he could pass easily over whether he had been unfaithful. “No,” he’d answer with resounding conviction. “I love my wife.” Which he did. And my mother, who didn’t understand the word
paradox
or its implications, agreed.
3
Shanda, Shanda
IF BUBBY’S DAYS belonged to her restaurant, to the endless stream of customers, friends, neighbors, her nights belonged to me. Her past was inexplicably wed to the present and during the winter months when it grew dark early and the last visitor left our apartment, Bubby suggested that we roll our folding beds into the dining room.
A dark alcove, not wired for electricity, led off the front room. Possibly it had been intended as a bathroom, an idea that the landlord may have abandoned to save money. Instead he installed two toilets in the hall on each floor of the five-story building. The unlit alcove inside our apartment held a skinny closet with shelves for my father’s laundered shirts and his vast assortment of ties. Next to them was a chest of drawers with Lil’s finery: her chemises, always called shimmys, her satiny one-piece undergarments named teddies and her silk stockings. Against the darkest wall stood my brother’s cot and a double folding bed for Bubby and me. The springs of our bed were soft and the mattress mushy, and a supporting iron bar under its center had lost some of its screws so that it slid from side to side capriciously. Lil, skillful with the Singer sewing machine, made a curtain from some drapery material to hide these sorry beds whose condition deteriorated with the years.
Bubby’s historic feather comforter, the perrina that she had brought with her from Odessa, had a decorated cutout in its center trimmed with cotton lace. Feathers escaped nightly through this cutout. In the coldest weather we piled wool blankets and even our overcoats over it. My grandmother, strongly attached to the perrina, called it her “wedding blanket.” Feeling it close to her skin brought her ever-flowing recollections of her dead husband, now gone for decades.
My fifth year had significance for me. Not only because I first began to help Lil with the words of songs, but because I tried to muddle my way through the meaning of time. My brother, Willy, always taken for younger than I, was two years older. My father had passed thirty: thirty, a vast age because I considered someone sixteen fully grown and someone ten almost out of childhood. And my grandmother related stories that happened before she gave birth to my father with the same passion, the anxiety, the rage and despair, as if the oncoming tragedy occurred on a day of the week before.
Other children of immigrant grandparents or parents may have heard tales of shtetl—village—life, marked by isolation and rigid religious ceremonies. But my grandparents came from a cosmopolitan city, a bustling trading seaport
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