he would brag, and of course they had him – and paid dearly. The cars were always breaking down, rust made its home on their sills, they were expensively and incompetently serviced by that chazzer Bert, the local German mechanic, whose annual holidays were financed entirely by Maurice’s follies. Talk about being taken for a ride!
She didn’t drive, she was driven. Crazy. Maurice would grudgingly take her shopping into the village, to the A&P, Wolfie’s, the pharmacy, waiting in the car, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. She bought her personals in the city, when Maurice gave her some money.
They didn’t educate girls when she was growing up: after the requisite few years at school they stayed at home, learned to cook, clean, knit and sew, kept house in a way that would make the family proud, looked after ageing relatives, did good works and waited anxiously for a prospective husband. There were eight children, the boys bright and ambitious, the girls consigned to helping at the counter in their Morningside Heights bakery, dusted by flour on top of their own talcum powder, flirting shyly with the local boys when they came in to buy an iced bun.
Maurice Kaufmann smiled shyly at her, seemed to take notice. She wasn’t a looker, Perle, but there was something warm and toasty about her, something almost delicious, as if she’d been produced out the back, fresh out of the oven. She was three years older than him, old enough at twenty-three almost to be on the back shelf with the other stale buns, increasingly desperate to find a husband, if only to shut her mother and sisters and aunts up. Anything to get out of that house, and Maurice was a lot better than that. He was something, with his pretty ways and beguiling smile, his willingness to loiter for a moment, make conversation, ask after her.
He was a real catch – going to law school! A good looker! – and she was immediately struck by his quickness and confidence. Every morning, before he’d popped in for his bun and chat, he’d already finished the Times crossword puzzle, he was a wizard at that, and he did them with a pen, never had to cross anything out! He’d show her, proud but a little shy, what the hardest clues were and how he’d solved them.
‘Capital of Belgium!’ he’d say. ‘Easy!’
She’d pretend to be astonished.
‘You couldn’t know that! You looked it up!’
‘Never, I swear!’
Most days she neglected to take his money, gave him a quick and rather forward glance as he started to reach into his pockets, shook her head imperceptibly. The first time she did this he started to protest, he was an honourable young man and didn’t want to get her into trouble, but he soon fell into line. Those nickels added up, and if he could save a quarter a week, well, that was something. She liked him, that was for sure.
He was equally taken by her, though it was her capacious bosom that first turned his eye and touched his heart. He was curiously reticent in that way, and it was she who had initiated first physical contact. Sitting in the Yiddish theatre one evening, on their fourth date, or perhaps it was their fifth, it depended on whether going out for a cream soda counted, she reached gently across the seats to where his arm was resting and took his hand. Gently, gave a little squeeze. That did it, and things progressed nicely, naturally, and quickly from there to the chuppah. She smiled, remembering that day, and night. Afterwards – for years afterwards, until the children were born – he was always desperate to tear off a piece, as she called it, crazy really. She enjoyed it, but enough was enough. After Addie was born she more or less lost interest, but she was an accommodating woman and a good wife, and life was easier when Maurice was satisfied.
Addie! They were so different now, young women – educated, with jobs of their own, outspoken, wanted to be equals with their husbands. Not all of them though, thankfully: Michelle was traditional, a good wife to Frankie, happy in her role as a mother and homemaker. She should maybe have a boy one day, that would be perfect. Knowing her, she would keep trying!
Addie couldn’t even cook. No, that was wrong; it was hard to find the right words. Addie wouldn’t cook. She could have learned, anybody could learn to cook, but she wouldn’t. Was it beneath her, with her fancy ways, her political causes and social work? Perle hoped not, that it was merely a matter of being uninterested, or too busy, food merely something that you took on as fuel. If Addie despised cooking, what did she make of her, her mother? Was it contempt she sometimes sensed in her daughter’s tone and sharp looks? She certainly wasn’t a girl you shared an exciting new recipe with. Addie looked at Michelle the same way she regarded her mother: sharp, disapproving, superior.
Michelle was a good cook and a wonderful mother. Addie was, what? Did she have to say it straight out, if only to herself? She wasn’t, please God, a bad mother, it was unfair even to think that. So what was she? The absence of the right word was alarming. She wasn’t a mother at all. Didn’t think like a mother. Didn’t worry or fuss, hardly cared what the kids ate or how they dressed, if they bathed often enough, cleaned behind their ears, washed their hair, got constipated. She liked reading to them, as if they could eat words; they’d taste better than her dinners.
Addie could shape a meatloaf, though she thought egg or onions or breadcrumbs were unnecessary, just add salt and pepper to the deflated football lump in the baking tin before putting it in the oven. Put out the ketchup, heat up some frozen fries in the oven, cut an iceberg lettuce in quarters, mix some Russian dressing to pour over it. She could overcook a steak or a pork chop. Slap together a sandwich on white bread, add mayonnaise or mustard.
Even the kids noticed: ‘This is delicious, Addie, did you defrost it yourself?’ they’d say, and giggle like Ben. Anyway, that was unfair, not everything needed to be thawed. Sometimes she opened cans or packets as well. But the notion that meals were something carefully assembled, to think about, to take pride in, as Perle took pride in her chicken fricassee, stuffed cabbage and pot roast . . . her chopped liver, egg and onion, fresh challah laden with schmaltz. No, not at all. Addie ate them, made the right noises ingesting and thanking, but she didn’t care. She took no pride in eating either.
In the morning she made toast, dark brown and crispy, and scrambled some eggs, which she would crack directly into a frying pan hot with butter, stir quickly with a fork, as globs of albumen floated amidst the overcooked yolk. The kids were fussy eaters, would pick at their plates, though she didn’t care if they finished or not. They had recently decided they didn’t like eggs, nor indeed oatmeal, which Addie produced in great lumps because she couldn’t be bothered to stir the pot. Instead they developed a passion for the new wonder cereal Sugar Frosted Flakes. With a sliced banana! They tried to get Poppa to try it, but he made a face, turned away, disgusted.
How could they possibly understand? Maurice was born in ‘the old country’ in 1892 – ‘the same year as Eddie Cantor,’ he’d say proudly, ‘only I’m eight months older!’ As a child – he didn’t remember how old, perhaps nine or ten? – he saw in the new century as a steerage-class passenger on a steamship to America, his mother and older sister with him, their tiny Bolekhov tannery hardly able to support the family. His father would join them later in New York, with the boys. Next year perhaps, or the next. God willing.
He remembered it well enough, the noxious smells that permeated their home and clothes, the rough trappers with their filthy clothes and dripping pelts, the vats of hot boiling water, the drying racks. He wouldn’t, perhaps couldn’t, talk about it. The children weren’t interested anyway, though he told them the story of having been given a soft and browning banana with his on-board supper, and told to peel and eat it. He’d never seen one, threw away the brown soggy fruit and tried to eat the peel. He made a face when he told the story.
‘I’ve never eaten one,’ he said. ‘They’re horrible!’
‘But, Poppa, you should try! You eat the middle bit! They’re good!
