Niagara Falls All Over Again (15 page)

“Are you married?” Pop asked me. He'd probably been rehearsing that line too.

“No.”

He nodded, and then said, “Don't wait too long.” Annie and Rocky appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. Already Rock was eating a beige boiled chicken leg. Then he saw my father and, thinking he should look presentable and be introduced already, tried to find a place to put it. Annie put her hand out, and he gratefully gave her the awful-looking thing. She took it with her back to the kitchen.

“Pop,” I said, “I want you to meet my partner. This is Rocky Carter.”

Rock knelt at my father's feet, as Annie had, and shook my father's ailing hand. “It's a pleasure, sir,” he said.

“Mr. Carter,” said my father, nodding. “What is it that you do for a living?”

Rock looked up at me.

“He's a comedian. Like me. We do an act together.”

“But after that?” said my father. He pointed at Rock. “Not forever.”

“Probably not,” said Rocky, “but for now.”

Pop regarded me with an expression I recognized. Hope. Sure: this was my partner, we were in some strange business together—why not stay here and take over the store? Always room for another name on the plate glass window: Sharp and Son and Friend.

“You,” said my father to Rocky. “Sir. Are you married?”

Rocky scratched the back of his head, ashamed. “That's a complicated question.”

“Bah!” said my father, but he smiled. “You young men! Why do you wait like this? Not good to have children late. Too much time wondering, will they be orphans.”

Pop meant himself, of course: he waited, he worried. Now he looked at me. “Why I married your mother.”

“Why?” I asked.

“An orphan,” he said. “Now, I wonder like my friend the rabbi. What will become of my daughter? Who will marry her? An orphaned girl is hard to marry. You,” he said to Rocky. “You, perhaps.”

Rocky looked at me slyly. “Where
is
Rose?”

My father frowned, and hissed in contempt at such a question. “No. Not—Annie. Who will marry
Annie
.”

From the kitchen we heard the humiliated sound of someone trying to drown out gossip from the other room with running water. I couldn't tell whether Pop's eyes were so bad he couldn't see that Rocky was young, or his memory so bad he'd forgotten that Annie was old. Middle- aged, anyhow: she was nearly fifty, too old even for a slaphappy friendly guy like Rock.

“You'll stay for dinner,” my father said to Rocky.

I was about to make an excuse, but Rocky answered, wincing only slightly, “Thank you, sir. Of course I will.”

In the kitchen, I tried to ask Annie about Rose, but she hushed me, and pointed to the parlor. I understood only that my father did not want her name spoken. As the house filled up with my sisters and their families, Rose was not even mentioned. My sister Fannie arrived first, holding a fat pink baby I was shocked to learn was her granddaughter. “This is Great-Uncle Mose,” she said, waggling the baby into my arms.

“Oof,” I said. “Who are you? You're heavy.”

“That's Francine,” she said. “Marilyn's girl.”

The baby scanned my forehead as though it were the morning paper.

That was how the night went: This is Leah's Lou; there's Sally's David. I was as flummoxed as a total stranger, my sisters and their children had been so fruitfully multiplying. My brothers-in-law—Morris, Ben, Abe—each took me aside and offered me money. Abe, Sadie's husband, actually slipped some bills into my hand. “Take it,” he said. “To set you up. I'm jealous, you know.”

“What of?”

We stood in the hall, and he peered into the parlor, teeming with babies and children and teenagers and wives. My God: how many sisters
did
I have? “Youth,” Abe said. “You know, I was a pretty fair dancer as a kid.” He gave his considerable belly a pat, as though it were a trunk that held all of his former success. “So take the money, and become famous with it, and maybe you'll give me a part in one of your pictures.”

I didn't need the cash, but you know what? His pride was worth more than my pride, so I took it. Seventy-five bucks.

I talked to Fannie, Sadie, Ida. I talked to their daughters—God's fancy joke, all those girls turning into more girls, though in the next generation down there were plenty of boys, and I wanted to say to my father, See? You can leave the store to Max and David and Lou: Sharp and Great-Grandsons.

The dining-room table had been stretched to an Olympic length with leaves and card tables at either end; we all sat around it, some in the dining room and some in the parlor. My father sat at the head of the table, Rocky and I flanking him, the long-lost son and his portly
goyishe
fair-haired brother. The design on Rock's dinner plate never saw daylight, with so many women rushing to serve him. He was extra-solicitous of Annie, who avoided him till she realized he wasn't avoiding her.

“I thought
tsimmes
had carrots,” he said.

“No,” Abe said gravely—my God, I hope he didn't slip Rocky money!—“Elsewhere, yes, but not in this family. Carrots in a
tsimmes
are a crime. Never speak of them.”

“I'm sorry,” said Rocky, just as gravely. “I didn't know.”

“You'll get the hang of it,” said Annie, ladling more
tsimmes
onto Rock's plate.

When Abe made a reference to the European war, the sisters quieted him. Fannie, who was given to speaking what she believed was Yiddish so the children wouldn't understand, said, “Ssshh.
Der Kinder
.”

“I'm saying only that at the Settlement House—”

“Tell me, Mr. Sharp,” Rocky said to my father. “When did you come to this country?”

My father turned to Rocky very slowly, brushing some crumbs out of his beard with the edge of his good hand. “Eighteen eighty,” he said. “First, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where I met my wife—”

“Sssh, sshh,” I said to some teenage niece, who was whispering about a boyfriend in my ear. All around the table, the Sharp children quieted whoever was talking. Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania? Wilkes-Barre,
Pennsylvania
?

There is nothing the least bit shocking about Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. We had simply never heard my father suggest anything but that life began in Iowa.

All sides of the endless table grew silent. My father noticed, though he continued to address Rocky directly: he just spoke louder. It was an effort for him. “Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania,” he said, “was where I met Rabbi Louis Kipple.” He pointed down the table to the portrait in the parlor. “And his daughter, my Goldie.”

“Did you love her right away?” Rock asked.

My father smiled. “She did not make a good impression, no. She was not so fond of me. But she was new. I went to see the rabbi to ask a question. His wife, not a well woman, not a nice woman, answered the door with the baby, I asked for the rebbe, she thrust the baby into my arms, squalling and screaming”—my father mimed a thrust baby as best he could—“and so I met Goldie. But had I plans to marry then, no.”

Have you ever wondered about what happens before Genesis? Why didn't God make Adam and Eve infants? My father had never told us this story. We had never asked.

Rocky said, “So then—”

“So!” said my father. “My question for Rabbi Kipple: How shall I worship when I travel? Shall I go to Iowa? We discuss. Fifteen years later his wife is dead, and he writes a letter: Can you get a minyan together in Des Moines, what about a shul, and then he comes, with Goldie, to Children of Israel. And then
he
grows sick, wants to arrange a wedding. Goldie prepared the meal. Awful. I thought, who will teach her to cook? A little Jewish girl, alone. Sixteen and fat. She would become a maid or shopgirl. I invited a child to live with me, I married her so no talk from the neighbors. I knew nothing of marriage.
American
marriages. They must involve love. Mine did.”

“She was beautiful,” said Rocky, as though he remembered her.

Pop nodded. He seemed exhausted. “So, my friend, Mr. Carter, this is why I tell you: it is good to marry. I didn't know myself. I thought I was only being kind.”

Oh, we were grateful to Rocky. We were angry, too. We—I am willing to speak for my sisters, now, for any child of a close-mouthed father—could not believe this was happening. A guy just waltzes in, and the next thing we know my father is telling stories like it's nothing. He held a baby in his arms, and fifteen years later he married her. That story was my inheritance, not Rocky's!

I am an old man myself now, and I understand. Your own children and their questions! They interrupt you. Their eyes bulge when a relative in a story behaves in a way they can't imagine (and they can't imagine much). They interrupt again, though every question they ask, every single one, is the same: How exactly has this story shaped my life? Why haven't you told me this before, didn't you know what it would mean to me?

Maybe it's just a good story. Maybe you just want to tell it.

My sisters left not long after dinner; with the table set up in two rooms, it was hard to linger. Rock and I formed a two-man receiving line at the door. After Ida had kissed Rocky's cheek, she turned to me. Then she burst into tears. “You're bald!” she said. “And I'm fat!” She threw herself into my arms.

“I'm not
bald,
” I said, the bratty little brother. She pinched my back to make me behave. “Sorry, sorry,” she said into my shoulder, then she stepped back and dried her face with a lavender handkerchief. “It's just: next time, don't be gone so long. Don't let me only hear you on the radio. I never thought I'd be jealous of Rudy Vallee, but I thought, Why does he get to talk to my brother and I don't?”

I took her hand and handkerchief, both wet. At least somebody in the family had an idea that comedy wasn't some hobby I'd picked up. She wasn't fat, Ida, just plump around the middle, and her eyes were still purplish-blue.

“He promises!” Rocky said.

“And he's a man of his word,” said Ben, shepherding his wife out.

The house felt forsaken once they'd all gone. Annie invited Rocky to stay overnight. No point going all the way to the Fort Des Moines.

“Take my room,” I said. “I'll stay down here, and sleep near Pop.”

My father's bed had been moved to the parlor so he didn't have to climb stairs. I didn't want to climb them myself, to wake up in the sleigh bed, waiting for Hattie to come through the window. Instead, I'd sleep on the sunporch on the old wicker settee, piled under quilts to keep warm.

It was late enough. Rock and my father both went to bed in opposite corners of the house, and I went to talk to Annie while she cleaned. There wasn't much to do, she'd had so much help in the kitchen.

“See?” she said. She sat me down at the table and poured me a cup of coffee. I could see the elm out back, and suddenly I wanted to climb it. “You've come home once. Now you can do it over and over.”

“Sure,” I said.

“A nice man, your friend Rocky. Tell him I'm not waiting for a proposal.”

“I will. So tell me—where
is
Rose?”

“Gone,” said Annie, and turned her attention to the sink.

“Yes, I know, but where has she gone?”

She shrugged and began to wash the bottom of a round pot in careful circular strokes, as though trying not to wake it. “Married. So she told us. To a man named Quigley.”

“Quigley,” I said. I tried to absorb this: Rose had married a man with a funny name, and so—

“Catholic,”
Annie said quietly to the pot.

“Oh.” I nodded. “Disowned.”

Annie shrugged again, miserable.

“Did he disown me, when I left?”

She spun suddenly, and held the soapy pot to her chest, as though she'd forgotten what it was—a bouquet of flowers, the hand of someone to whom she professed love. “No, of course not. We couldn't forget you. You were always our boy.”

Exactly what I was afraid of and hoped for. “Well, at least Rose left for love.”

“Love!” Annie sniffed. “No, for love she would have stayed. She didn't even ask!”

“Ask what?”

“If she should marry him! She should have asked!”

“Would Pop have said yes?”

“No: that's why she should have asked.”

I laughed. Smart Rose.

“We don't mention her,” said Annie. She put the pot back in the sink. The front of her dress was damp. “So please. Don't.”

“You mean Pop doesn't mention her.”

“No.” Then she said, more to the last of the dirty dishes than to me, “He's never said her name. Not once.”

I imagined she did, though, every night:
Rose, where are you?

In the living room my father snored so raspily it made the back of my throat ache. I was always their boy. I'd never been lost, just gone. Just away. Not like Rose, good as dead. Worse: she was dead but insulting them still, wherever she was. I don't think Rose was a thing my father had ever imagined losing; he had only seen that she would lose him. An orphaned girl is hard to marry. My father had lost other children: Samuel and Libby and Sarah and Abie and Louis and Hilla. Hattie. He'd almost lost me, too, but here I was, thanks to Rocky. My father had worked to keep hold of me, I was a fortune, but Rose was the loose change in his pocket, and he'd lost her out of carelessness. He'd never told her who she should marry. He'd never told her, Your life is here, with those who love you.

He was busy telling that to me.

A Catholic, a barbarian. He knew nothing of Catholics except the words that came to him:
flesh, thorns, passion
. He saw gilt-edged blood when he closed his eyes. And now Roseleh was married to one.

“Lots of people hate Jews too,” I told Annie.