The Smartest Woman I Know (2 page)

“‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t expect to find you a virgin.’”

Tootsie lived with Ettie and Mr. Goldberg for one year, until she got married at eighteen. I lived with Ettie and Mr. Goldberg for six years, until I went to college.

Some of the things I remember about those six years might not really have happened. I might have mixed up my memories with my sister’s memories or with movies I saw. Sort of like the Kurosawa movie
Rashomon
. In that movie, many witnesses to the same event describe in detail what they saw. Each recollection is different.

To me, everything I’m going to tell you really happened. Like the time I was fifteen and bought a black dress for a New Year’s Eve party and Ettie said to me, “You’re wearing black? You’re going to a funeral?”

Maybe what happened in those small moments shaped my life more than I realized. Maybe we are the memories we hold on to. Things that happened a long time ago seem to have happened yesterday. Even now, sixty years later, when I wear a black dress, I remember Ettie’s words.

DURING THE YEARS I lived with Ettie and Mr. Goldberg, the world changed a lot. World War II had ended, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, Israel became a state, long-playing vinyl phonograph records and the Diners Club credit card were introduced, Senator Joseph McCarthy conducted a “witch hunt,” the Rosenbergs were executed, 50 percent of Americans owned television sets, and the Korean War ended.

But during that time, life didn’t change very much for Ettie. After raising three children while working in the store seven days a week, she found herself, at the age of sixty-five, raising two grandchildren while working in the store seven days a week.

Just about all day, everyday, Ettie would either be standing by the cash register, waiting on a customer, or sitting on a folding chair in the back of Goldberg’s candy and stationery store holding court and schmoozing with the customers.

A
NYBODY WHO WAS ANYBODY in the neighborhood—the
machers
, the mavens, the
meshuggeners
—came in to Goldberg’s. Most of them weren’t Jewish.

Loyal customers like Mr. Arnold, who never went out without his boater straw hat, spats, walking cane, and the young man by his side he called darling.

Mr. Goldberg didn’t wait on them. Ettie went out of her way to be nice to them.

Mrs. Vanderhaven was also a regular customer. Her elbow-length gloves always matched the silk flowers on the wide-brimmed picture hats she always wore.

Ettie said she kept the tags on her dresses tucked in the sleeves so she could return them to Russeks of Fifth Avenue after she’d worn them a few times.

Every Friday, Mrs. Vanderhaven would buy two Will & Baumer ten-inch ivory candles for her dining room table. The first of every month, she’d come in and spend an hour standing at the magazine rack looking through
Vogue
and
Harper’s Bazaar
.

“Madam,” I once heard Mr. Goldberg say, “this is a store. We sell things. If you’re not buying, it would be my honor to escort you to the public library on 58th Street.”

Mrs. Vanderhaven

SARA DELANO ROOSEVELT, FDR’S mother, lived in a brownstone at 47 East 65th Street, around the corner from the store. Every once in a while 5′10″ Sara, who ruled over her son Franklin and her daughter-in-law Eleanor, would come into the store and visit with 4′10″ Ettie.

What did they have in common? They were both mothers of sons, so they both worried.

Sara worried about her son Franklin’s future because of his polio. Ettie worried about her son Larry’s future because of the draft.

“Don’t worry,” Ettie told Mrs. Roosevelt, “your son’s got a good head on his shoulders. I bet someday he’ll be president.”

Ettie told that to every customer who had a son. “That’s how you make a customer,” she told me.

If a customer had a daughter, Ettie would say, “Don’t worry. Your daughter’s got a good head on her shoulders. I bet someday she grows up to marry the president.”

NOT EVERYBODY WHO CAME into the store was a “somebody.”

Mrs. O’Reilly was an Irish governess who worked for a fancy lady on Park Avenue. Every other sentence out of her mouth was “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

Mrs. O’Reilly had come from Dublin when her hair was red and she still had freckles. Even after her hair turned gray and her freckles turned to liver spots, she spoke with a brogue.

She had three grown sons. One was a priest, one was a policeman, and one she never talked about.

What did Ettie and Mrs. O’Reilly have in common? They both worried.

Mrs. O’Reilly would come in with a cheery “And how are ya today, Mrs. Goldberg? Did ya have your good-morning tea?”

After Tootsie and me, what Ettie loved most was hot tea and lemon. It had to be Lipton tea. In a glass. She’d put a sugar cube in her mouth and sip the steaming tea through the sugar cube.

“Yes,” Ettie would answer Mrs. O’Reilly. “Two glasses. Thank you for asking. But I know how much you like your Irish coffee.”

Mrs. O’Reilly would say, “Indeed, I do. Indeed I do. But I have it at night after I take off my shoes and my girdle.”

“Kineahora
, Mrs. O’Reilly. You should only live and make a habit of it. You drink coffee. I drink tea. But otherwise we have so much in common.”

“Because we both have three children?”

“No, I mean the Irish and Jews have so much in common.”

“That’s what’s called malarkey, Mrs. Goldberg.”

“You ever hear of corned beef? So, the Irish eat theirs with cabbage, we eat ours with a pickle.”

“Mrs. Goldberg, are ya sure you never kissed the Blarney stone?”

“Kissed the Blarney stone? I never even kissed Mr. Goldberg.”