Up From Orchard Street Read Online Free

shivered with delight. If he ate at the kitchen table, he could grab still more food from the trays and pots that covered every surface. Eating sent his moist steel-rimmed glasses sliding to the end of his bulbous nose.
    My grandmother overlooked his boorish manners not because he brought in demolition workers to remove the wall between the bedroom and living room without telling the landlord, but because she was indulgent toward all males. Even someone as crude as Weinstock elicited her compassion. “Just think of his poor wife,” she said, laughing, “having to live with such a bulvan.”
    The enlarged room became an asset and Weinstock took the credit for the idea. At first jealously flared among the neighbors because Manya had the largest living room in the building, but they all agreed that her restaurant brought class and distinction to everyone who lived at 12 Orchard Street. Eventually the talk about the enlarged room died down.
    To a significant degree Jack’s vision of how life should be lived came from the movies. He attended every change of program at the neighborhood theaters and walked to Second Avenue for the latest ones. During one of those pseudo-British films in which Constance Bennett trilled her r’s and said “rawther” every other minute to certify that she was a genuine Brit, she leaned against a grand piano covered with a heavily embroidered shawl with a border of luxurious fringe. Bug-eyed at the sight, Jack had to have one like it for Orchard Street. He depended on his mother to obtain the shawl.
    Physically, Manya was both appealing and aristocratic in her bearing. It wasn’t her copious white hair that attracted men, her flawless white skin, her billowing breasts, but the innate womanliness that emanated from her. Even when she wore her cooking clothes—a mammoth Hoover apron that she slipped on over her head and tied around a baggy dress or her cardigan sweater, a dull brown thing appropriate for shopping—she exuded a sympathetic femininity.
    Manya didn’t give much thought to her appearance. More often than not she washed her face and body with the brown kosher soap that contained no fat from forbidden animals, and wrapped her hair in a haphazard bun held together with several large imitation-turquoise hairpins. Her cooking shoes were splattered with chicken and goose fat, bits and oddments of duck, salmon roe, even calves’ brains. Because she had been raised on the Black Sea, she loved caviar, so every now and then a glistening bead would fall upon her well-fed shoes. The smell of food on her body made her no less alluring. More than one male customer winked and said he would like to feed upon her.
    When her precocious son demanded the embroidered shawl for the dining table she cried out, “Where will I get it? On a pushcart? In a store down here? Maybe we have to ride uptown. Maybe I have to put on my good shoes and a blue silk dress. You can’t walk into uptown stores like a beggar.”
    “Someone will get it for you. But you must be charming.”
    “And who should I charm? Sophie Gimbel? Madame Hattie Carnegie?”
    Jack began his characteristic pacing as he thought through his scheme. Abruptly he stopped and answered, “Orloff.”
    “Orloff, the silk man? Meshugana,” his mother protested. “Everything in his store is from fire sales, water sales, damaged dye lots, with colors that no one wants and he has to sell two cents a yard above cost. From him you’re expecting a shawl with fringes like in the movies?”
    Jack leaned over and kissed her cheek. He loved her overwhelmingly and he often averted his glance from her lest he betray how deeply he felt. He parceled out his kisses for the same reason.
    “No, Maminyu, I don’t think Orloff sells a silk shawl, but he knows where to find one. I’ll go with you when you ask him. I’ll be waiting outside the door, or under the steps. If he gets fresh, I’ll be there to protect you.”
    It was a well-known fact that Orloff