The Collected Stories, page 13
* Yankee in a Skullcap: My Day & Night in the East Bronx, Shmul Klein. Mitzvah Press.
* The Moment of Pff: An Urban Boyhood. Shmul Klein. Mitzvah Press.
The Floating Truth
The day I knocked, all the slats were flat. “Where are you, Lionel?” I shouted. “In the do-funny?”
“For goodness’ sake, be quiet,” he said, unlatching the back door. “I’m the other side of the coin.”
I nicked him with my forefinger. “You don’t ring right, Charley. You’re counterfeit.”
“Come on in and settle,” he said. “Keep your hat on. The coat rack’s out of order.”
I had visited before. The seats were washable plaid plastic—easy to care for—and underfoot was the usual door-to-door fuzz. In graceful disarray philodendrons rose and fell from the back window ledge.
“How in the world can you see to drive, Marlon?”
“Well, baby, I don’t drive it much,” he said. “It isn’t safe.”
He offered me an apple from the glove compartment.
“Nature’s toothbrush,” I said dreamily. “How’ve you been, Eddie?”
He sighed. “Things never looked better.”
He hopped out the front door and crawled in the rear. He was not a seat climber. “Truthfully, I would have phoned you no later than tonight,” he said. He snapped the blinds horizontal, and from the east the morning glared at our pale faces. He took a paper and pencil out of a small mahogany file cabinet built along the rear of the front seat. “Let’s get down to brass tacks,” he said. “What do you want to do?”
“What does anyone want to do?”
“Let me ask the questions,” he said. “What do you want to do?”
“Oh … something worthwhile,” I said. “Well, make a contribution … you know what I mean … help out somehow … do good.”
“Please!” he said bitterly. “Don’t waste my time. Every sonofabitch wants to do good.”
“Why, that’s nice,” I said. “What a wonderful social trend. In these terrible times it’s marvelous news.”
“It’s marvelous news …” he squeaked in a high girl-voice. “Don’t be an idiot. All of time is terrible. You should have lived in a little farming village during the Hundred Years’ War. Anyway, do you realize you’re paying me by the hour? Let’s get started. What can you do?”
I was surprised to hear that I was paying him by the hour. Still, for all I know, despite their appearance, these times may not be terrible at all.
“I can type. I went to business school for three months and I can type.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve gotten jobs for virgins. I could place a pediatrician in the Geriatric Clinic.”
“If you’re so great, Bubbles, how come you don’t even have a home?”
“I’ve only just found myself,” he said, turning inward. On the outside he was a mirror image of a face with a dead center. His eyes were blue. The pupils were dark and immovable. He never saw anything out of the corner of his eye but swiveled his whole head to stare at it. His hair was blond, darkening in a terrible rush before the gray could become general. All his sex characteristics were secondary, which did not prevent him from asking me after our first day’s work, “Give me a bunny hug, baby?” I didn’t mind at all and did, goosing him gently. It seemed to me he’d like that a lot. I am not considered wild, but I am kind.
I scraped a ham sandwich out of my dungarees and offered him half. “Gasoline is what I need,” he said peevishly. “I was going to call for a man who invited me to La Vie for a business deal.”
Just then the phone rang. He lunged over the front seat for it. “What good luck, Edsel,” he chortled. “You got me just as I was pulling up to a meter. Hold it a moment while I disengage.” He made grunting noises as though great effort were involved because of tonnage, then resumed his conversation. “Yes? About tonight? I’m not sure I can make it … I’ve got to be out all day …”
I waved a one-dollar bill across the windshield mirror. “Ah … make it quarter to ten, so I have time to eat … No, that’s not necessary … No … Well, if you insist, at least allow me to call for you. I’ll stop by at eight-thirty … Great … It’ll be marvelous to talk with you again. Arrivederci.”
“Here,” I said, “is a dollar. Petrol.”
“I appreciate it,” he said.
The Edsel he met at eight-thirty, honking his horn before a canopied doorman, was Jonathan Stubblefield, but don’t try to reach him because he’s unlisted. His eyes were pale as the moon. They drove here and yon, hip-flasked, unwatered and unsodaed, uniced and defrosted, looped in one another’s consonants. Lack of communication made them appear to be lovers.
“Do you have a friend?” asked Jonathan Stubblefield. “Yes, a girl,” said my pal, his nose always to the grindstone. Jonathan Stubblefield misunderstood. “Hotcha!” he replied. “I have a friend myself, but the goddamn family— What do you think of the family?” he asked, trying to make sense of his entire life.
“The Family of Man? Oh, I believe in it. But look here, Edsel … this girl I’m talking about is not a sexual partner. She’s a business associate. Lively, alert, young, charming, clever, enthusiastic. How can you use her?”
“Oh boy,” said Jonathan Stubblefield, stupefied. “Upside down, cross-country, her choice. Any way she says.”
“You still misunderstand me. It’s her business affairs I’m in charge of.”
“Oh,” said Jonathan Stubblefield. “Oh,” he said, “in that case send me a résumé,” and passed out.
“But you didn’t tell him anything about me,” I complained the following afternoon.
“Why should I? He didn’t tell me anything about himself. Do you think his real name is Stubblefield? What’s the matter with you? Don’t put yourself on a platter. What are you—a roast duck, everything removable with a lousy piece of flatware? Be secret. Turn over on your side. Let them guess if you’re stuffed. That’s how I got where I am.”
The organization of his ideas was all wrong; I was drawn to the memory of myself—a mere stripling of a girl—the day I learned that the shortest distance between two points is a great circle.
“Anyway, you ought to think in shorter sentences,” he suggested, although I hadn’t said a word. Old Richard-the-Liver-Headed, he saw right through to the heart of the matter, my syntax.
“Well, now, just go somewhere for a couple of days. Home, maybe. How about home? Go to the movies. I don’t give a damn where you go. I’ll have the résumé ready. I’ve pinpointed Edsel. He’s avid to have an employee.”
“I’ll do what you say.” I had to get started somehow. I had been out of school six weeks and was beginning to feel nearly unemployable.
I ducked out of the car. A cop came to the door and squinted authoritatively. “Listen, Squatface, I told you Tuesday, get this hearse to a mummery.” He was one of those college cops, in it for the pension. Security is an essential. How else face the future?
“Ran out of gas,” my chum whispered as soft as soup.
“Here’s a dollar,” I replied. “More petrol.”
It rained for three days. On the fourth morning, I received a telegram, PHONE OUT OF ORDER, MEET ME USUAL PLACE, SEE EDSEL. LIKE FLYNN, YOU’RE IN.
At noon I found them admiring new white tires. (These are the good times.) I was all dressed up and they were all dressed up. Jonathan Stubblefield observed me. His eyes were pale as the moon. He winked and a tear rolled down his smooth cheek. “I have an occluded lachrymal duct,” he explained.
“Let’s go to the Vilamar Cafeteria, where we can talk.” He added with pride, “It’s on me.”
We proceeded at once, single file, Stubblefield leading. In the cafeteria we seated ourselves deferentially around a rotating altar of condiments and began in communal reverence.
“You seem so young,” said Jonathan Stubblefield. “I can’t really believe that time has passed. Take a good look at me. A man of thirty-one. Inside my head, a photostatic account of Pearl Harbor. I can still see it so clear … the snow just stippling the rocks—”
“Snow?”
“Snow. The absolute quiet and then that wild hum and then the noise. And then the whole world plunged into disaster.”
“Oh my!”
“You were too young. But I remember—Geneva, Yalta, the San Francisco conference, much-scoffed-at Acheson; those days were the hope of the world. I remember it like yesterday.”
“You do?”
“What sort of memories can you young people of today have? You have a reputation for clothes and dope. You have no sense of history; you have no tragic sense. What is Alsace-Lorraine? Can you tell me, my dear? What problem does it face, even today? You don’t know. Not innocent, but ignorant.”
“You’re right,” I said.
“Of course,” he said. “You can’t deny it. The truth finds its own level and floats.”
“Coffee?” asked Roderick the middleman.
“Not me,” said Edsel. “Baked apple for me. And salmon salad. Jell-O maybe. I’m on a diet.” He patted his tummy. “Now tell me about yourself. I want to know you better.”
I tossed my ponytail, agleam with natural oils, and said: “What can I say?”
“You can tell me about yourself. Who you are, where you come from, what your interests are, your hobbies. Who’s your favorite boyfriend, for instance?”
I told him who I was, where I came from, what my interests and my hobbies were. “But I’m still waiting for Mr. Right to come out of the West.”
“You and I have a lot in common,” he said sadly. “I’m still waiting for Mr. Right too. I’m paraphrasing, of course. I mean Miss Right.
“You know, you dress beautifully. You look like a rose. Yes, a rose is what is indicated.” He touched gently that part of the décolletage furthest from my chin.
He looked at his watch, which had a barometer tucked in somewhere along its circumference. “Pressure rising; I’ve got to run. Tell our friend ‘excuse me’ for me. Tell him you’re hired, pending résumé. I’ve got to have that résumé. I don’t do business without documentation.”
He stood up and transported his gaze slowly from the lady’s rest room to the steam counter, the short order table, the grand coffee urns, and finally to the great doors which rested where their rubber stoppers had established them.
“I am lord of all I survey,” he murmured. He smiled beneficently on my shining face, then turned on his heels, like the sound of the old order changing, and disappeared into the Götterdämmerung of the revolving doors.
“Oh, Everett, what an interesting man!” I said. We split the salmon salad, but Jell-O reminds me of junket.
“Well, what do you think of him? Not bad. He’s the wave of the future. A man who can use leisure. Here’s the résumé.” He was very businesslike and continued, as he buttered a hard seeded roll, to give me orders for my own good. “Type it. Do a nice job … only it has to look home-typed; the only one of its kind. Maybe you ought to make a mistake. If he thinks you’ve plastered the city with them, you’re finished … Look it over. It’s a day’s work, and I’m kind of proud of it.”
I riffled and read. “Say, it’s three pages, legal size. Do you know it’s three pages?”
“Aha!” he said in pride.
“Oh, please, it’s ridiculous. What’ll I do if he calls any of these people?”
“No, no, no. He wants to hire you. He’s crazy about you; he wants to be your friend. When he sees all these words, he’ll be happy and feel free. He may not even read them.”
I looked it over again. These are only a few of the jobs with which he had papered my past. The first, in advertising:
The Green House: In eight exciting months I brought The Green House’s name before the public in seven ways—all inexpensive: two-color posters were distributed. No copy used. A green house on an eggshell-white background. Two-color matchbooks—no copy. Two-color personal cards for all personnel. The Green House itself was finally painted green. Here and there throughout the city where people least expected it (park benches, lampposts, etc.), the question asked in green paint: What Is Green? In infinitesimal green print below and to the right the reply: The Green House is green.
“What in hell is The Green House?”
“I don’t know.” He giggled.
Here’s another; this, under the heading of Public Relations:
The Philadelphia: An association of professionals working in the law and allied fields hired me to bring law and its possibilities to women everywhere. I traveled throughout the country for five months by bus, station wagon, train, and also by air under the name of Gladys Hand. Within nine months there were 11 percent more users of legal services. The average fee had jumped $7.20 over the previous year. Crowded court calendars required statute revisions in seven states. The Philadelphia ascribed these improvements to my work in their behalf.
And more:
The Kitchen Institute: Through the medium of The Kitchen Institute Press’s “The Kettle Calls,” we inaugurated a high-pressure plan to return women to the kitchen. “The kitchen you are leaving may be your home” was one of many slogans used. By radio and television, as well as by ads taken in men’s publications and on men’s pages in newspapers (sports, finance, etc.), men were told to ask their wives as they came in the door each night: “What’s cooking?” In this way the prestige of women in kitchens everywhere was enhanced and the need and desire for kitchens accelerated.
At the very end, as though it were of no importance whatsoever, he had typed “More Facts” and then listed: Single, twenty-three, Grad. Green Valley College for Women. Additional Courses, Sorbonne, in Short Story Writing and Public Speaking. Social Chairman of GO in high school.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said. “That last is pretty silly.”
“It may be silly to you, but if he reads it at all he’ll certainly read the last line and he’ll like that. ‘A girl who was lightheaded enough to be social chairman in high school may still be spinning,’ is the way I see it.”
“But listen,” I told him two days later. “I’m not twenty-three.”
“You will be, you will be,” he assured me.
That afternoon I was helping him water the philodendrons. I was a little excited about being on the threshold of my future, and some water dripped down the back seat and filled the crevices of the upholstery.
“My God, you infuriate me sometimes,” he said, tearing the watering can from my hand. “Can’t you watch what you’re doing?” Poor Dick, he was a covey of twittering angers. “You’re so damn stupid!” he screamed. He poured the dregs into an open ashtray and sprinkled the windows. “Get something, get something,” he cried. I ran down to the store and bought an old Sunday Times to help clean up the mess. I realized that, against great odds, he was only trying to make a home. When I returned he was on the phone: “Can’t have you down here. Place is incredible! Let me pick you up. I want to close the deal. It’s been pending too long … I said 10 percent … 10 percent is what I want. That’s not excessive.”
“What deal?” I asked.
“Big deal,” he replied sotto voce. “O.K.”
The phone rang again. “Edsel!” He beamed. “Long time no see. Long time no hear also … Of course,” he said. “Ha-ha. ‘Can she do shorthand?’ Baby, he wants to know if you can do shorthand! Ha-ha, Edsel, she’s a speed demon!”
“I can’t,” I whispered.
He twisted his trunk to reach me and then kicked me on the shin.
He hung up. “O.K.,” he said. “Go on over. He’s all yours. Good luck. You’ll get my bill in the morning mail.”
Well, that is how I got my first job. I entered the business world, my senses alert. I quietly watched and voraciously listened. Every 9 a.m. in the five-day week I opened the heavy oak door on which a sign in Old Regal said STUBBLEFIELD. I kept my pencils sharpened. I read the morning papers in the morning and the evening papers in the afternoon, in case some question about current events should arise.
It was true, he had been avid to have an employee and seemed happy. Often his mother called to ask him to please come to lunch or cocktails. Occasionally his father called but left no name. At decent intervals I was instructed to say he was out of town on business. He entrusted me with the key, and when he was away for two or three days, I was in full charge.
I had planned to remain with the job for at least a year, to learn office procedure and persistence.
But one Monday at about 10 a.m. the door opened and a camel-hair blonde, all textured in cashmere, appeared. “I’ve just been hired by Mr. Stubblefield,” she said, “via Western Union.” She flapped a manila half sheet under my nose. “I met him in Bronxville last graduation day.” She looked around. There were mauve walls and army-colored file cabinets. “I just love a two-girl office,” she said, expecting to be my friend. “What’s he like? Does he give severance pay?”
• She was followed by a desk and a Long Island boy from the Bell Telephone Company. I didn’t say anything to anyone but filed my Time and unfolded my New York Herald Tribune. I resharpened my pencil and proceeded to underline whatever required underlining.
“A lot of paperwork?” asked Serena, a cool revision of my former self. I had nothing to say.
Jonathan Stubblefield poked his snout out of the inner office. “Get to know each other, girls. You’re exactly the same age.”
That information unsettled me.
“You don’t know how old I am,” I said. “Anyway, what do you need her for? I’m doing a job. I’m doing as good a job as you require. This is a deliberate slap in my face. It is.”
“We’re in the middle of an expanding economy, for goodness’ sake!” said Jonathan Stubblefield. “Don’t be sentimental. Besides, I thought we could do with some college people.”
“But there isn’t enough work to go around,” I said bravely. “There’s nothing to do.”
