“What of?”
We stood in the hall, and he peered into the parlor, teeming with babies and children and teenagers and wives. My God: how many sisters did I have? “Youth,” Abe said. “You know, I was a pretty fair dancer as a kid.” He gave his considerable belly a pat, as though it were a trunk that held all of his former success. “So take the money, and become famous with it, and maybe you’ll give me a part in one of your pictures.”
I didn’t need the cash, but you know what? His pride was worth more than my pride, so I took it. Seventy-five bucks.
I talked to Fannie, Sadie, Ida. I talked to their daughters — God’s fancy joke, all those girls turning into more girls, though in the next generation down there were plenty of boys, and I wanted to say to my father, See? You can leave the store to Max and David and Lou: Sharp and Great-Grandsons.
The dining-room table had been stretched to an Olympic length with leaves and card tables at either end; we all sat around it, some in the dining room and some in the parlor. My father sat at the head of the table, Rocky and I flanking him, the long-lost son and his portly goyishe fair-haired brother. The design on Rock’s dinner plate never saw daylight, with so many women rushing to serve him. He was extra-solicitous of Annie, who avoided him till she realized he wasn’t avoiding her.
“I thought tsimmes had carrots,” he said.
“No,” Abe said gravely — my God, I hope he didn’t slip Rocky money! — “Elsewhere, yes, but not in this family. Carrots in a tsimmes are a crime. Never speak of them.”
“I’m sorry,” said Rocky, just as gravely. “I didn’t know.”
“You’ll get the hang of it,” said Annie, ladling more tsimmes onto Rock’s plate.
When Abe made a reference to the European war, the sisters quieted him. Fannie, who was given to speaking what she believed was Yiddish so the children wouldn’t understand, said, “Ssshh. Der Kinder.”
“I’m saying only that at the Settlement House—”
“Tell me, Mr. Sharp,” Rocky said to my father. “When did you come to this country?”
My father turned to Rocky very slowly, brushing some crumbs out of his beard with the edge of his good hand. “Eighteen eighty,” he said. “First, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where I met my wife—”
“Sssh, sshh,” I said to some teenage niece, who was whispering about a boyfriend in my ear. All around the table, the Sharp children quieted whoever was talking. Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania? Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania?
There is nothing the least bit shocking about Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. We had simply never heard my father suggest anything but that life began in Iowa.
All sides of the endless table grew silent. My father noticed, though he continued to address Rocky directly: he just spoke louder. It was an effort for him. “Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania,” he said, “was where I met Rabbi Louis Kipple.” He pointed down the table to the portrait in the parlor. “And his daughter, my Goldie.”
“Did you love her right away?” Rock asked.
My father smiled. “She did not make a good impression, no. She was not so fond of me. But she was new. I went to see the rabbi to ask a question. His wife, not a well woman, not a nice woman, answered the door with the baby, I asked for the rebbe, she thrust the baby into my arms, squalling and screaming”—my father mimed a thrust baby as best he could—“and so I met Goldie. But had I plans to marry then, no.”
Have you ever wondered about what happens before Genesis? Why didn’t God make Adam and Eve infants? My father had never told us this story. We had never asked.
Rocky said, “So then—”
“So!” said my father. “My question for Rabbi Kipple: How shall I worship when I travel? Shall I go to Iowa? We discuss. Fifteen years later his wife is dead, and he writes a letter: Can you get a minyan together in Des Moines, what about a shul, and then he comes, with Goldie, to Children of Israel. And then he grows sick, wants to arrange a wedding. Goldie prepared the meal. Awful. I thought, who will teach her to cook? A little Jewish girl, alone. Sixteen and fat. She would become a maid or shopgirl. I invited a child to live with me, I married her so no talk from the neighbors. I knew nothing of marriage. American marriages. They must involve love. Mine did.”
“She was beautiful,” said Rocky, as though he remembered her.
Pop nodded. He seemed exhausted. “So, my friend, Mr. Carter, this is why I tell you: it is good to marry. I didn’t know myself. I thought I was only being kind.”
Oh, we were grateful to Rocky. We were angry, too. We — I am willing to speak for my sisters, now, for any child of a close-mouthed father — could not believe this was happening. A guy just waltzes in, and the next thing we know my father is telling stories like it’s nothing. He held a baby in his arms, and fifteen years later he married her. That story was my inheritance, not Rocky’s!
I am an old man myself now, and I understand. Your own children and their questions! They interrupt you. Their eyes bulge when a relative in a story behaves in a way they can’t imagine (and they can’t imagine much). They interrupt again, though every question they ask, every single one, is the same: How exactly has this story shaped my life? Why haven’t you told me this before, didn’t you know what it would mean to me?
Maybe it’s just a good story. Maybe you just want to tell it.
My sisters left not long after dinner; with the table set up in two rooms, it was hard to linger. Rock and I formed a two-man receiving line at the door. After Ida had kissed Rocky’s cheek, she turned to me. Then she burst into tears. “You’re bald!” she said. “And I’m fat!” She threw herself into my arms.
“I’m not bald,” I said, the bratty little brother. She pinched my back to make me behave. “Sorry, sorry,” she said into my shoulder, then she stepped back and dried her face with a lavender handkerchief. “It’s just: next time, don’t be gone so long. Don’t let me only hear you on the radio. I never thought I’d be jealous of Rudy Vallee, but I thought, Why does he get to talk to my brother and I don’t?”
I took her hand and handkerchief, both wet. At least somebody in the family had an idea that comedy wasn’t some hobby I’d picked up. She wasn’t fat, Ida, just plump around the middle, and her eyes were still purplish-blue.
“He promises!” Rocky said.
“And he’s a man of his word,” said Ben, shepherding his wife out.
The house felt forsaken once they’d all gone. Annie invited Rocky to stay overnight. No point going all the way to the Fort Des Moines.
“Take my room,” I said. “I’ll stay down here, and sleep near Pop.”
My father’s bed had been moved to the parlor so he didn’t have to climb stairs. I didn’t want to climb them myself, to wake up in the sleigh bed, waiting for Hattie to come through the window. Instead, I’d sleep on the sunporch on the old wicker settee, piled under quilts to keep warm.
It was late enough. Rock and my father both went to bed in opposite corners of the house, and I went to talk to Annie while she cleaned. There wasn’t much to do, she’d had so much help in the kitchen.
“See?” she said. She sat me down at the table and poured me a cup of coffee. I could see the elm out back, and suddenly I wanted to climb it. “You’ve come home once. Now you can do it over and over.”