Too Jewish (10 page)

I was looking out the long glass panel at the side of the store, watching the street for her car, when she came up next to me. She had a K&B bag in her hand. I didn't say anything. I just grinned when I saw the bag. "Hey," I said. "Hey," she said, trying not to smile.

I didn't reach out to hug her or kiss her. I knew she would punish me, if only for effect. "Buy me a Coke," she said. This was not my regular Letty. "Please," she said, seeing my expression.

"Whatever I did, I apologize," I said. I had no idea what it could be. The last time we had seen each other, I'd walked her all the way back to her house and kissed her at the door. No one had been home. It had been a sad afternoon, for me, but I'd said nothing that would bother her. I thought it was more the opposite.

"It's not me you need to apologize to, it's my mother."

I stared at her. Her mother. Her mother. I'd seen her mother on my way to Ted's house. Her mother had been unspeakably mean. I'd stood my ground. It had been my only combat mission of the war. Not mission, more like roadside sabotage. "Nice to see you": I told Ted I said that, and he said I was a killer. I thought the expression was "killing with kindness."

"Does this have to do with when I passed your mother on my way to Ted's house?"

"Oh, baloney."

"Excuse me?"

"My mother says you were sneaking past our house, and she caught you, and when she confronted you, you were really nasty."

This was going to be a scene out of a Kafka novel if I wasn't careful. "Letty, dear Letty, I hadn't seen Ted since we shipped out, and I found out he was living with his parents, so I phoned him, and I was on my way to see him when I bumped into your mother."

She thought that over for a second. "First of all, what would my mother be doing outside? And second of all, she said you banged on Ted's door and he acted like he saw some ghost from the past when he found you out on his step, screaming and hollering. You were not on your way to Ted's."

I could feel my face getting red. I didn't know if my feelings were hurt or if I was angry. I hadn't allowed myself to be upset in as long as I could remember. I couldn't speak. So I didn't speak.

"What do you have to say for yourself?" Letty said finally. Her voice wasn't as harsh as it had been.

"How can I try to tell you the truth when you want to believe something your mother has made up?"

"Are you saying she's lying?" Letty said. She wasn't being accusatory. Not at all. She almost sounded pleased.

"Could we just say she was playing fast and loose with what happened?"

Letty leaned back in her seat, folded her arms. And I told her everything that happened on her street that afternoon, up to and including what Ted said. "Boy, do I owe you an apology," she said when I finished.

"Like you said when we started, it's your mother who owes me an apology," I said. "And that's not going to happen."

Letty had looked a little peeved when we sat down, but now she looked furious. I didn't know she could be that way. "I can't stand this," she said.

I looked at her with as much innocence as I could muster. I already had been in trouble once over her mother. I was getting ready to apologize again when she spoke.

"You have to forgive me for saying this, especially given your situation with your mother, but my mother is a real bitch," she said. "She never approves of anything I do, and she knows I like you. So she was going to deliberately sabotage our relationship. I mean, she lied!"

I stared at her. I couldn't believe such a word would come out of such a girl.

"God, I never should have used that word," Letty said. "I am so sorry. I'm just so mad."

I gave her a supportive little chuckle. "If I were a nice guy, I wouldn't have learned it in English," I said, and she smiled.

"I can't explain it to you. Ever since I can remember, nothing I've ever done has been right as far as my parents are concerned. I'm never smart enough or pretty enough or socially acceptable enough. They hate Shirley just because her last name is Hurwitz, for Chrissakes."

My mother always thought I was the smartest, most handsome boy ever born, so this was foreign to me. But what is more foreign was why she cared. "Why do you care?"

"Because I need to know I'm good enough."

"What if I tell you?" I said.

Letty leaned forward to take a sip from her Coke, her lips pursing around the straw like a kiss; she knew what she was doing. "Tell me how you feel about me," she said.

"I love you enough to be here," I said. "And by here I don't mean just right here, I mean in this country and in this city. I think I even mean within a mile or two of your parents." She leaned over the table and kissed me with her lips wet with icy cola. "I've been waiting a long time to say I love you. Signing letters love' doesn't mean anything."

"It doesn't?" I said. All along I'd thought otherwise. Letty giggled. "I certainly didn't write love' to Axel," I said, and she giggled again.

"Do you remember right before you left you said we were going to have to write because it was all we could do besides get married tomorrow?" she said.

I remembered that very well.

"You thought I was a strong girl who'd think that was just a funny line, didn't you."

I nodded. I'd made a big assumption. "There's truth in every joke, you know."

It was Letty's turn to say nothing and let me walk around in my own mess.

Truth in every joke. I smiled broadly at her. And naturally she knew what I was thinking. "I didn't go out with boys while you were gone," she said, helping me.

"Not at all?"

"Well, there's going out with boys, and there's going out with boys," she said. "I went places, and sometimes boys took me, but I didn't consider them
possible,
you know?"

That's exactly how I would have explained the girls I met in London. It wasn't just that they were in the wrong part of the world. I didn't give them a chance. Actually I did give them a chance, but it never took more than a moment or two. None of them was Letty.

"You waited for me."

"And I read your letters," she said. "You write better English than any other boy I know." My eyes widened. "Or any girl, either. I do go to school, you know."

"I liked your letters and didn't notice the English," I said. I hoped she wouldn't ask whether I saved them. I'd decided saving them would have meant fear.

Her voice got so soft I almost couldn't hear it. "Really, I loved your letters."

"I came back here to be with you," I said. "Everything else about being here is wrong. I need to be in New York." I had the tiniest hope she would say that she loved New York. But I knew that even if New York always kept her transfixed when she visited there, the only way she could live there would be if her parents relocated to Park Avenue.

"Thank you," she said.

I told her I couldn't find a job. She countered that she had one more year of college before she had to think about such matters. At least she didn't suggest college for me. She was the only person I knew who considered me educated. Aside from the U.S. military.

We couldn't say some things to each other. I wondered if that was the way it was between men and women. The only couple I'd ever known up close had been my parents, and my father had died before I'd cared about such matters. Besides, in Germany in the 1920s, men and women saw no need to speak to each other except about things. To do, to get. Never to think.

I wanted to tell her that she should follow me to New York. Without saying it, she was telling me that she wanted me to consider New Orleans my new home. "We're going to be together for a long time," I said. That was where I started.

I was home when the man from Krauss's called. He was offering me a job. That wouldn't have been unusual, except that I hadn't gone into Krauss's to apply for one. Krauss's was a low-end department store on Canal Street, across Rampart Street from the stretch of more chic stores closer to the river, and in truth I just hadn't made it down that far. Whatever "down" meant. It was nine in the morning, and I told him I could be there by ten. I didn't ask any questions. He was the general manager, and I was sure I'd know more before the day was over. He told me to enter through the customer doors at the front. Any saleslady could direct me to his office.

I was glad I'd taken a shower the night before, because it took forty-five minutes to get down there. When I asked the woman at the lipstick counter for Mr. Kern, she stared at me as if I had a lot of nerve. "Who are you?" she said. Her own lipstick was flag red, and she seemed to have grown accustomed to the power her mouth gave her. "I have an appointment," I said. "He phoned me this morning." I didn't say it with any kind of personal importance, because I didn't think I was about to be more important than she was, but she softened up.

Mr. Kern hired me on the spot, no questions asked. He sat with me and talked about my short life history while I filled out papers, and when I came to references, I looked up at him and said, "I guess this would be a good time to ask who exactly my references are."

"Excuse me?"

I put down the pen. "I'm afraid that when you phoned me, I didn't expect it," I said. "Someone contacted you on my behalf, and I don't know who it was."

Mr. Kern leaned back in his chair and laughed. "I don't know if I'm supposed to have a secret," he said. "But I don't think so. Isn't Letty Adler your girlfriend?"

At that moment it became official. Not the fact, but the word. I nodded.

"Well, I've known that girl since before she was born. I went to school with her mother. Even went on a few dates with her. But nothing special. You know how high school goes." He stopped. "Sorry."

"I was sixteen once," I said. "The world didn't end just because the world was ending."

"Thanks. Well, it was Letty who called me. She said all you needed was one person who'd look past the fact that you were from out of town. Way out of town. You know what I mean."

I could tell I was making him nervous. I was getting uncomfortable. But I could tell from his name that he was Jewish, and I also could see it in his face. So at least he wasn't some Episcopalian trying to be charitable. He also wasn't a reform Jew who didn't have any use for refugees.

"Do her parents know she called you?"

He shrugged. "Far as I'm concerned, it's none of their business. Unless, of course, you turn out to be a bum." I smiled. "You got down here in an hour. I don't think you're a bum." I absentmindedly stroked my chin. I'd done the fastest shave ever.

Letty had influence, but not enough to get me a job commensurate with the degree in literature from the University of Mannheim. I would be working in piece goods, a popular department. As he walked me to my post, I told Mr. Kern that I was a partner in a business in New York that made novelty goods using fur scraps. I felt as if those minutes were my last chance before I became a small man in retail. Mr. Kern understood what I was trying to do. "I think you're going to find our customers come here because they need to sew their own clothes," he said. "They don't come here because they have a lot of extra money to buy fancy knickknacks for their purses. The only fur in their houses is on the cat."

I would work in sales for a week, and then I would handle inventory. I didn't need to be told that I was the first person in piece goods to be hired by Mr. Kern himself. No one dared resent me. No one dared ask where I was from, either. The only people with German accents who lived openly were Jews; anyone else who had left Germany would have been a Nazi fleeing his crimes and learning Spanish and avoiding extradition. But people in New Orleans were too unschooled to know anything more than that I had a foreign accent, fair hair, blue eyes, and a very English name. Even though I seemed to know Mr. Kern, it never occurred to anyone in piece goods that I was Jewish, because they all felt free to call Mr. Kern a kike right in front of me. When I scowled, they said, "Aw, buddy, you know we love the guy."

My first week gave me no time to think, except on the streetcar, and then I did too much thinking for my own good. I was selling fabric to women for whom every inch, every penny made a difference, and each customer watched me as if I were a criminal who wanted to dupe her. I told one woman the truth, that a blue linen would make a lovely church dress, and of course linen cost more than cotton, so she said I was trying to make Mr. Krauss rich. "Why would I want to do that?" I said. "Well, then you're trying to make yourself rich," she said, still huffy. I laughed, and she laughed, too, and she bought faux pearl buttons, and I recognized a salesman in myself, but I wasn't going to tell anyone, because I couldn't wait to move into inventory. On the streetcar in the evening, I wondered if I'd survived only to sell pearl buttons. I'd read the existential philosophers, who probably would have told me I might as well have sold those buttons because it didn't make any difference, but I looked around the streetcar at all the other people who worked downtown for no reason, and I didn't see misery in their eyes. They looked too dumb, to tell the truth, especially the men in business suits.

On Friday I went home with a paycheck for twenty-five dollars, and my despair went away. My rent was only three dollars a week, and that left me full of possibilities.

I was asleep on Saturday morning when my landlady knocked on my door. "You've got company," she said. It was Shabbat, and I didn't do anything on the Sabbath. I walked everywhere, and I didn't cook because that used fire. I wasn't fanatically observant, just enough for me never to forget my origins. Since there was no synagogue in walking distance of where I lived, I generally just lay low.

"I think it's Little Red Riding Hood," the landlady said. She was kind of beside herself with pleasure. I had no idea who Little Red Riding Hood was.

"Who's that?"

"A girl who frolics in the woods wearing a red cloak and carrying a picnic basket. The wolf tries to eat her."

Rotkappchen.
I remembered her well.

I threw on slacks and a shirt that looked presentable, but I had no time to do anything else. I shuffled down the steps. And there she was. Letty. She didn't have on a red cap or cloak, but she was carrying a picnic basket. I didn't go all the way down. I didn't want her to see me up close, disheveled and unshaven. "I heard Little Red Riding Hood was here," I said.