Up From Orchard Street Read Online Free Page B
edged closer to her.
She rolled her eyes heavenward and slid out the door.
Five or six weeks later, the perfect shawl arrived from uptown. He, Orloff, had taken the subway to Fifty-seventh Street, to a shop with fancy prices, and he sold it to her at cost, hand to his heart, not a penny did he take for himself because Manya’s happiness came first.
Young Jack regarded the shawl with awe. It was pale ivory silk, with cabbage roses embroidered in red, lavender and white thread. The heavy ivory fringe swept down almost to the floor. “Classy,” my father said.
From a knot in her stocking Manya retrieved twenty dollars, turning chastely away so that Orloff did not catch a peek at her snowy thigh. After he consumed a meal of made-on-the-premises pickled herring, barley mushroom soup, duck with red cabbage and potato pancakes, Linzer torte and three glasses of tea with four lumps of sugar and raspberry jam on the bottom, served in a filigreed holder, Orloff pretended to give Manya a receipt. Instead he kissed her full on the lips. She shooed him out with a quick push and a slam of the door. A few months later, a rug peddler staggered in with a secondhand Persian rug, almost good as new, taken from a Turkish boat that very morning. What with the silk shawl for the table and the Persian rug, my Bubby’s salon became the talk of the neighborhood.
2
Paradoxes
CUSTOM DICTATED THAT Jack have his rite of passage as a man, his bar mitzvah, when he reached the age of twelve instead of thirteen, because he had no father. Already taller than his mother and dressed in a gray suit with a white shirt and navy blue tie, he wowed the guests and the various officials at shul with his rapid-fire readings of the Hebrew text and his speech in English so elevated that he could compete with any young man a decade older.
After the services Bubby served a sit-down dinner at home for selected guests: the Lipinskis and Bertha; Weinstock and his wife, who was his former sister-in-law whom he had married when his first wife succumbed to the flu; Orloff and his wife, not as yet adapted to American ways and still wearing an outdated wig, a sparrow’s nest, on her head; Greenspan from the bakery without his wife and free to grow roaringly drunk during the first hour; Saperstein, her sturgeon and caviar purveyor; and Stein the butcher, who had been the first to race to her side when her husband died. And then there was Dr. Koronovsky, fresh out of medical school and already a legend for his handling of epidemics that bore away dozens of inhabitants in a single day.
Of the many toasts in Jack’s honor, the most stirring was provided by young Dr. K., who assured everyone that Jack Roth, with his gift for language, was destined to become a brilliant lawyer, possibly a judge, and undoubtedly, if Jews were permitted this privilege, a government official. After these rousing words he handed Jack a five-dollar gold piece.
Bubby shed tears of joy. Jack, slick of hair and adult in bearing, grew two inches taller from the praise. After dinner the doors of the apartment were thrown open and everyone, whether invited or not, could partake of the “sweet table”: slices of cheesecake, bundt cake, strudel, rugulach, strawberry shortcake prepared with sponge cake, honey cake, macaroons, chocolate cake, Linzer torte, nut cookies, lemon cookies, sugar cookies, hamantaschen, prune Danish and cinnamon twists— mountains of everything. “Manya’s affair” created buzzing gossip and conversation for years to come. What other bar mitzvah could match free food of such variety and quality?
At high school, Jack zoomed ahead, grew bored and restless with the bland subjects. Who knows whether he would have fulfilled his destiny as a lawyer if he hadn’t walked over to Division Street just for laughs and been hired immediately to sell coats to women who knew little about fashion and less about speedy, eloquent speech. Within months, working only on Saturday and
She rolled her eyes heavenward and slid out the door.
Five or six weeks later, the perfect shawl arrived from uptown. He, Orloff, had taken the subway to Fifty-seventh Street, to a shop with fancy prices, and he sold it to her at cost, hand to his heart, not a penny did he take for himself because Manya’s happiness came first.
Young Jack regarded the shawl with awe. It was pale ivory silk, with cabbage roses embroidered in red, lavender and white thread. The heavy ivory fringe swept down almost to the floor. “Classy,” my father said.
From a knot in her stocking Manya retrieved twenty dollars, turning chastely away so that Orloff did not catch a peek at her snowy thigh. After he consumed a meal of made-on-the-premises pickled herring, barley mushroom soup, duck with red cabbage and potato pancakes, Linzer torte and three glasses of tea with four lumps of sugar and raspberry jam on the bottom, served in a filigreed holder, Orloff pretended to give Manya a receipt. Instead he kissed her full on the lips. She shooed him out with a quick push and a slam of the door. A few months later, a rug peddler staggered in with a secondhand Persian rug, almost good as new, taken from a Turkish boat that very morning. What with the silk shawl for the table and the Persian rug, my Bubby’s salon became the talk of the neighborhood.
2
Paradoxes
CUSTOM DICTATED THAT Jack have his rite of passage as a man, his bar mitzvah, when he reached the age of twelve instead of thirteen, because he had no father. Already taller than his mother and dressed in a gray suit with a white shirt and navy blue tie, he wowed the guests and the various officials at shul with his rapid-fire readings of the Hebrew text and his speech in English so elevated that he could compete with any young man a decade older.
After the services Bubby served a sit-down dinner at home for selected guests: the Lipinskis and Bertha; Weinstock and his wife, who was his former sister-in-law whom he had married when his first wife succumbed to the flu; Orloff and his wife, not as yet adapted to American ways and still wearing an outdated wig, a sparrow’s nest, on her head; Greenspan from the bakery without his wife and free to grow roaringly drunk during the first hour; Saperstein, her sturgeon and caviar purveyor; and Stein the butcher, who had been the first to race to her side when her husband died. And then there was Dr. Koronovsky, fresh out of medical school and already a legend for his handling of epidemics that bore away dozens of inhabitants in a single day.
Of the many toasts in Jack’s honor, the most stirring was provided by young Dr. K., who assured everyone that Jack Roth, with his gift for language, was destined to become a brilliant lawyer, possibly a judge, and undoubtedly, if Jews were permitted this privilege, a government official. After these rousing words he handed Jack a five-dollar gold piece.
Bubby shed tears of joy. Jack, slick of hair and adult in bearing, grew two inches taller from the praise. After dinner the doors of the apartment were thrown open and everyone, whether invited or not, could partake of the “sweet table”: slices of cheesecake, bundt cake, strudel, rugulach, strawberry shortcake prepared with sponge cake, honey cake, macaroons, chocolate cake, Linzer torte, nut cookies, lemon cookies, sugar cookies, hamantaschen, prune Danish and cinnamon twists— mountains of everything. “Manya’s affair” created buzzing gossip and conversation for years to come. What other bar mitzvah could match free food of such variety and quality?
At high school, Jack zoomed ahead, grew bored and restless with the bland subjects. Who knows whether he would have fulfilled his destiny as a lawyer if he hadn’t walked over to Division Street just for laughs and been hired immediately to sell coats to women who knew little about fashion and less about speedy, eloquent speech. Within months, working only on Saturday and
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