Boys and Girls Together: A Novel

  She approached the table. “Only two sandwiches?”

  “I already ate,” the boy said. “Downstairs.” His stomach started rumbling.

  “Why are you coughing like that?” his mother said. “Is it too cold for you in the store?”

  “Frog in my throat,” and he turned for the door. “I’m helping Grandfather. I’ve got to go now. Goodbye.”

  “Don’t work too hard,” his mother called after him as he skipped on down the stairs. The old man was sitting in his wooden chair, eating a sandwich. The boy sat down by the canned soups.

  “Chicken noodle,” the old man said a moment later.

  “Chicken noodle,” the boy repeated.

  “Campbell soups, not only are they tasty, they’re educational.”

  “Could I ask you a question?”

  “Ask me a question.”

  “In the meat counter? I wonder what do you call what’s between the salami and the tongue.”

  “This, from a Jewish boy? Corned beef. In some communities you can be ostracized for such an inquiry.”

  “I wonder, is it any good?”

  “Taste for yourself,” and he stood up, slicing a piece of meat.

  The boy approached, took the meat and ate it. Then he shook his head.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Well, you just can’t tell about corned beef unless there’s bread around it.”

  “Wisdom,” the old man said, and he cut some more meat and two slices of dark rye bread.

  “I have had corned beef from Solomon’s. I wonder is yours as good?”

  “I await your decision.”

  The boy bit into the sandwich. “No,” he said. “Solomon’s is better.”

  “You have just,” the old man said, “hurt my feelings.”

  “Of course, I’m not hungry,” the boy said quickly. “That has a lot to do with it. Probably if I was hungry, yours would be at least as good.”

  “The pain is lessening.”

  “I have never been hungrier than when I ate the Solomon’s.”

  “Miraculous,” the old man said. “The wound is healed. A pickle?”

  “Yes, please. Sometimes a pickle makes food go down easier, especially if you’re not hungry.”

  “Nothing like a dill to make the food go down.” He reached down into the barrel, found a pickle, then handed it back over his head to the boy on the counter.

  The boy sat quietly on the counter, kicking his legs, biting into the sandwich, nibbling at the pickle, keeping them even, until, with one last swallow, both were gone. “Sometimes I wonder,” the boy said presently.

  “About?”

  “Well, why is it, I wonder, that sometimes I start to eat and I’m not hungry and then I eat and I’m still not hungry, but when I’m all done I could probably still eat some more.”

  “Most mystifying,” Old Turk said, rising, moving around the counter to the corned beef, starting to slice.

  “Is it all right, my sitting here on the counter like this?”

  “Do you hear the customers complaining?”

  “Why aren’t there more customers?”

  “Why do you never smile?”

  “I smile.”

  “You do? I can’t remember having seen it. Perhaps you just don’t smile around me.”

  “Why aren’t there more customers?”

  “Anti-ss-ss-ss-Semitism.”

  “I don’t understand.” The boy took the sandwich and began to eat.

  “Don’t you know that joke? About the Jew who applies for a job as a radio announcer. Only he has the stutters. And when he doesn’t get the job his friend asks him why, and the Jew says, Anti-ss-ss-ss-Semitism.’ ”

  The boy took a bite of his sandwich.

  “You didn’t laugh.”

  The boy looked at him.

  “At my joke. You didn’t laugh.” He slumped in his chair, nose pointing to the wooden floor. “Do you know what the worst thing in the world is? I’ll tell you. The worst thing in the world is to be a fool.”

  “Why are you a fool?”

  “Because you didn’t laugh at my joke.”

  “But I didn’t get it.”

  “I accept that as a possibility. But it is no excuse for not laughing. When someone tells a joke there are four possibilities: either you don’t get it or you get it but you don’t think it’s funny or you get it and you do think it’s funny or you’ve heard it before. Of those four, only one relieves the listener from the obligation of laughing.” He reached into the pickle barrel, gave a pickle to the boy, took another for himself and began waving it in the air.

  “Thank you,” the boy said.

  “If the joke is funny, then you don’t have to laugh. Because a man telling a funny story is not a fool. Oh, you can laugh if you want to; no law against it. But you don’t have to. The funny man, he doesn’t need your laughter.” Around and around went the pickle in the air, circling high, swooping down, suddenly pointing straight at the boy, who stopped in mid-bite, eyes and mouth wide. “I see a rich man with a limp and I think, my, what an expensive cane he uses. I see a poor man with a limp, and I think, oh, how that must hurt.” The pickle was swooping again. The boy gobbled the remainder of the sandwich. Then the pickle was back on him, and he froze. “I see a pretty woman weeping and I say, ‘How pretty!’ When an ugly woman weeps, I say, ‘How sad!’ The winners of this world, they can adjust their own laurel wreaths. The losers go bareheaded. The winners need only a mirror; the losers need your laughter. Vegetable,” he said to the boy, who was back at the canned-soup shelf.

  “Vegetable,” said the boy, staring at the can. “I know a joke.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s dirty.”

  “I’ll forget where I heard it.”

  “All right, here goes. Have you read The Yellow River by I. J. Daily?”

  “No.”

  “That’s the joke,” the boy said. “The Yellow River by I. J. Daily.”

  “Oh, of course, of course,” and he started to laugh. “I ... hah ... I see—yes—ho, hah—The Yellow River—oh yes—I. J. Daily.” The old man rocked back and forth in his chair. “Oh, I love that—wonderful, wonderful—yes, hah, ho.” He laughed until he stopped.

  “I thought you’d like it.”

  “Clam chowder,” the old man said.

  “Clam chowder,” the boy repeated. “C-l-a-m ...”

  Old Turk rose from his chair and walked to the front of the store, staring out. “The Yellow Riverby I. J. Daily?” He shrugged. “That’s a joke? That’s funny?” He shook his head. Back and forth. Back and forth.

  “Did I say ‘I. J. Daily?’ ” the boy called.

  “Several times.”

  “Oh. Well, I told it wrong. I meant ‘P.’ The Yellow River by I. P. Daily.”

  “Yes, that’s a decided improvement. Not only is it dirty, it also makes a little sense.”

  “But you’re not laughing.”

  “Of course I’m not laughing. Why should I laugh? Now it’s funny.”

  “What kind of crap is that?” Sid stormed.

  “Shhh,” Esther said. “They’ll hear you.” She sat up in bed watching her husband crisscross the tiny room.

  “I tell a joke and nobody laughs. I mean, what kind of crap is that?”

  “They might not be asleep yet. Come lie down. It’s late.”

  “Was it a funny joke, Tootsie? I ask you. My joke about the camel. Didn’t I tell it perfect? Is there a better joke-teller than me living anywhere? And then my kid, my flesh and blood, he says it’s funny but he don’t laugh. I mean what kind—”

  “Maybe he didn’t understand the joke.”

  “Didn’t I offer to explain? Didn’t he say he understood the joke? I like to hear people laugh when I tell jokes.” Sid glared at the door. “It’s that father of yours. I’m telling you, he’s no good for the boy. Why don’t he spend his time on the fire escape like he used to?”

  “It’s too cold.”

  “
Yeah?” Sid said, the door still holding his glare. “Well, it’ll warm.” It did, but not for ten days, and during the first five the boy continued his canned education. He moved from the soups to the fruit, then the vegetables. The condiments gave him trouble, but eventually he mastered them, advancing from there through the spices and the meats, finally to the cartoned dairy products, to the cheeses and the creams. Quite by accident, one afternoon, he and the old man invented “Seek the Seltzer,” a simple enough game—it evolved somehow out of “Pin the Tail on the Kreplach,” an earlier invention that after less than a day had already started to pall—in which Old Turk shouted the name of a product and then counted slowly while the boy whirled around the store, seeking the product before the old man reached ten. “Mushroom soup,” the old man would shout and then the boy would flash from the counter to the soup section, searching desperately for the can with the eight-letter word. In the beginning he lost more than he won, but by the second day he had pulled even and the day after that found him beating the game, some times winning before the count of seven, sometimes before six, and once he located the pickled herring before the count of three, grabbing the jar from the dusty shelf, holding it triumphantly over his head for all the world to see. They played “Seek the Seltzer” all day long, day after day, even on the morning the weather turned warm. It rained that morning, rained hard, and there were fewer customers than usual to interrupt the game, and at lunchtime the boy took food up and then came back down to dine with the old man, and after lunch they played until the sun came out. As it broke through the clouds, they both stopped and stared into the brightness, and then the old man shouted “String beans! String beans!” very loud and the boy hesitated by the counter. “String beans!” the old man yelled and then the boy moved, toward the string beans and past them, past the dairy case, out the door, gone.

  “String beans,” the old man said, softer now. He looked at the door a while, and then he shook his head. He groped for his chair, found it, sat down heavily. Again he shook his head. Then he nodded. Then he shrugged. Then he reached for a pickle and ate it, shaking his head until the pickle was gone. Then he reached behind him for his book, opened it to the toothpick and started to read. He read the same sentence half a dozen times before closing the book. Mrs. Feldman came in and he smiled until she said what a hurry she was in so could she please just have a quart of milk, and though he tried to entice her with conversation she would have none of it and, plunking down her pennies, she toted the milk out of the store and he was alone. Again Old Turk sat down, but he wasn’t comfortable. “Too many pickles,” he muttered, and he patted his stomach. Then he went to the shelves and began straightening the cans. Widow Kramer came in, evil Widow Kramer who always accused him of overcharging, of stocking only junk, of weighing with a heavy thumb. Old Turk looked at the harpie, at the skeletal destroyer of his equilibrium, and he smiled. “Widow Kramer, a pleasure.”

  “You got any cheese that isn’t rancid?”

  “So nice to see you, Widow Kramer. Have I got cheese? Here. Take a knife. Taste. Take your time.”

  “You sick?”

  “Never better. I just thought we might pass the time chatting and tasting—”

  “A pound of Swiss and be quick about it. And I’m not buying your thumb.”

  Turk weighed the cheese, wrapped it, nodded with each insult, bade her farewell. Alone again. He started to sit, thought the better of it. He had craved the Widow Kramer’s company. Begged for it almost. Turk sighed, and the sound filled the empty store. He was not partial to the sound, but he sighed again. He could not stop sighing. Abruptly he turned and started for the door, half running, bent over in an old man’s shuffle. He closed the door and locked it and hurried outside through the sunshine around the building to the back. When he reached the alley he stopped, peeking around the edge of the building. There, feet dangling in space, was the boy, head through the bars of the fire escape, staring. At what? What was there to see? Turk shook his head. Where did it come from, such beauty? Not from Sid or Esther; God knows they didn’t resemble him. And God knows he didn’t. So where did it come from? “God knows,” Turk muttered. And then, with a shake of the head: “Beautiful.” Tiny and dark on the fire escape. Turk turned, trudging back to his store. “The boy should have some air,” he said. “Yes.” He unlocked the store and stepped inside. Enormous it was—suddenly enormous. Bleak and plain and too big. Much too big. “The boy should have some air,” Turk said. He wandered into the tiny store. “Fool,” he said then. “Fool.” He sat down in his beloved chair and tried to close his eyes, but they preferred to scan the labels on the shelves across. “The boy should have some air!” the old man shouted, immediately feeling better for the exercise, stronger, for now his eyes did close and he slumped, hands in his lap, nose aimed at the floor. Good times he thought of. Not good times gone, but good times as they happened, for the conjuring of past pleasures was the secret of long life. He heard his father’s laugh, his mother’s song; he tasted duck for the first time, and chopped liver lightly salted, and beer; he rolled in snow, he kissed a breast, he raced the dog to water, rode the horse, won from his sister at checkers, lost to his brother at chess; he talked on a telephone, listened to a radio, saw Toscanini, walked beside Casals—and held his breath as his grandchild said “I was wondering” from the delicatessen door.

  “What—you were wondering what?”

  “What I was wondering was, you couldn’t come out to the fire escape, could you?”

  “I could. But who would watch the store?”

  “Mother?” The boy stood on tiptoe, avoiding the cracks.

  “In her present mood your mother would frighten away the few customers we have.”

  “Father?”

  “That strikes me as vaguely impossible. In his present mood your father would frighten away your mother.”

  “We could hire somebody.”

  “We could do that.”

  “Why don’t we?”

  “Because we would starve, because it would cost us more money than we have just to pay his salary.”

  “Well, maybe we could both go out on the fire escape except that we would tie a string around the front door and take the string with us so that every time the string moved we would know it was a customer and you could run down the fire escape to the store and fill the order.”

  “Now that’s a marvelous notion, except that I am not as young as some people and chances are all that running up and down would kill me.”

  “Well, we could do the same thing with the string except I would do the running up and down and fill the order.”

  “That, I think, is a perfect solution except that, even though you are a first-class label reader, you are not quite so brilliant at adding up numbers and therefore you would probably either overcharge the customers, in which case they would yell at you, or undercharge them, in which case they would cheat you, and after a while they would either be so angry at us they would go to the A&P or they would have cheated us out of everything and we would starve.”

  “You know what? This is more fun than ‘Seek the Seltzer.’ ”

  “More intellectual,” the old man agreed.

  “Could I have a pickle? I mean, you do want to sit on the fire escape?”

  “Nothing would give me more pleasure.”

  “Well, we’ll just have to figure it out.”

  “All problems are solvable.”

  “And I’m going to stay right here until we do. I mean, I could stay outside, but I’m going to stay right here. Stores are better for thinking.”

  “Infinitely.”

  “Yes. We’ll get it. But it may take days.”

  “Weeks, even.”

  “Months.”

  “Years.”

  “What comes after years?”

  “Perhaps we’ll find out, you and I.”

  So they pondered the problem of the fire escape, and they slept in the same bed, and they did what they could to cheer Sid and sweeten
Esther, and they played “Seek the Seltzer” until the boy was perfect and after that they waited on customers together, the old man saying “Spinach for the Widow Kramer,” the boy running down the vegetable, swooping it up, dashing back to set it on the counter, then waiting for the next labor, “Granulated sugar, monkey, five pounds for the Widow,” and he would retrieve the sugar and whatever followed the sugar and whatever followed that until the list was done. Then he would say “Add,” and the old man would obey, and then the old man would take the money and give it to him and he would gently open the money drawer and tuck it safe inside, and then they would sit until the next customer. And while they sat, they talked. They talked about why there were cracks in the sidewalks and what happened to letters once you dropped them in the mailbox, and prehistoric dinosaurs and railroad trains and sharks and squid and slinky barracuda. They talked about how they were going to spend the reward money they were going to get after they captured the gangsters who might try to rob the store and how they would subdue any frothing mad dog who happened to wander in and what did the Lone Ranger really look like and just what was in Fibber McGee’s closet. And men from Mars. And Stanley Hack. And the Italian the evil Yankees had found to run in center field. And the great Bronko Nagurski. And J. Donald Budge. And rain. And they talked about the old country. And Old Turk’s childhood. And the awful boat ride across when he was eight. And how he happened to come to Chicago. And they talked about his father. And they talked about his mother, who died on the trip. And his sister, who died in Cincinnati. And they talked about his brother and they talked about his wife.

  But mostly they talked about his nose.

  “My nose? You want to know how I got my nose?”

  “Yes.”

  “You really want to know how I got—”

  “Tell me—tell me!”

  “You’re absolutely positive you’re interested in hearing how—”

  “Yes-yes-yes.”

  “God gave it to me personally.”

  “No, he didn’t either.”

  “Since you obviously already know the story,” Old Turk said, leaning back in his soft wooden chair, “there doesn’t seem to be much point in going on with it.”