They Call Me Supermensch Read online

  Every time we opened the door and looked down the hall into the kitchen, she was in there, my little grandmother, maybe four foot eight, always in the kitchen either squeezing oranges or flipping latkes. As long as she was alive, whenever you opened her door the view was the same. When I was in college in Buffalo and drove to New York I always stopped at her place first, and there she was in the kitchen, same as always, squeezing the oranges or flipping the latkes. The first thing I did, every time I visited, from when I was a kid onward, was to sit down at her kitchen table and eat. And then we would say hello. Our relationship was built on an amazing amount of love, but also food.

  I always joke when I’m cooking in my house that I’m channeling my grandmother. When people show up here, there’s chicken soup on the stove. It’s her recipe. I changed one thing. I use chicken stock instead of water and cook it down. Chicken, carrot, celery, onion. Dill is the only herb she used, except every once in a while she would put in a piece of garlic. So I do the same.

  My grandmother’s apartment was a very nice one-bedroom. Her bedroom was in the back. My uncle Benny slept on a foldout sofa bed in the living room. He never married, and lived with my grandmother until she passed away. He was a short man, maybe five foot eight, bald, with a great big beautiful hooked nose. I was very close to him. I don’t remember this, but I’m told he used to help me with my ingrown toenails, which still bother me. He’d sit for hours and hours pushing the skin back. He was that kind of guy, a beautiful man, very kind and gentle.

  What I do remember about Benny is that he always seemed to be drifting off to sleep. He’d nod at the table, he’d nod watching TV. Many years later I found out why. Benny worked in the vehicle transport business. Giant cargo ships unloaded thousands of cars at the docks in Newark, New Jersey. Transporters picked them up and delivered them to various locations. They might load a dozen cars onto a big truck, or a driver might pick up a single car and drive it somewhere. Benny was one of those. Each driver carried his own license plate, which he put on the car when he picked it up, and removed on delivery.

  One day I was sitting in my office with the very successful jazz producer Joel Dorn, who said in passing, “How’s License Plate Benny?”

  I said, “Who’s License Plate Benny?”

  “Don’t you have an Uncle Benny who delivers cars? Well, he’s a very famous poker player around town. They call him License Plate Benny. Plays every night.”

  For the first time I understood why Benny nodded off all the time.

  When I was in the third grade we moved out to a new suburb, Oceanside, farther out on Long Island, very near the seaside town of Long Beach. Oceanside was famous for having the second Nathan’s hot dog stand (after the first one, in Coney Island). It’s still there, on Long Beach Road, which runs through Oceanside straight out to the boardwalk. When I was in high school a group of us went to Nathan’s for lunch almost every day. I was caddying at a golf course, two bags at a time for eighteen dollars a round, and spent all the money on Nathan’s hot dogs, fried clams, and clam chowder. My mouth is watering as I’m writing this.

  Oceanside grew up about the same time that Levittown did, that 1950s moment when suburbs flourished, and it looked very similar, like Ozzie and Harriet’s neighborhood. On our street, Henrietta Avenue, maybe twenty houses faced each other on a block, all exactly the same split-level design. They were really nice houses, with big yards in front and back, maybe a half or three-quarters of an acre. Through our front door you walked into the living room, which my mother furnished very much of that era, with plastic slipcovers on everything because that furniture was never to be sat on. It was just for show. That led into the dining room, also rarely used, only for formal occasions. We did almost all our eating in the kitchen, which was not unlike my grandmother’s, with a round table and benches and some chairs. Downstairs was the den, where the TV was. The utility room was right off the den, and then there was the garage. One flight up from the kitchen were two bedrooms. I had one, my brother had the other. Our own bedrooms—that was huge! Up another flight was the master bedroom for my parents.

  For all of us who had moved out from the city, Oceanside was an entirely new world. For the first time in our lives we had landscape, we had pets, we had trees and grass and air. It was another very nice, very friendly community. Everybody knew everybody else on the block. I took to it right away. I always had little jobs in the neighborhood, like delivering newspapers on my bicycle, and helping the man with the neighborhood dairy route deliver eggs and butter. I’d never go a block without waving to somebody. Very Beaver Cleaver.

  But the move to Oceanside came with one major drawback, and its name was Skippy. My brother wanted to be a veterinarian. Not long after we moved to Oceanside my mother let him get a dog, because now we had a backyard. My mother gave my brother anything he wanted. Of the two of us, he was definitely her favorite. (Or at least I thought so until I was sixty-five. That’s when my brother told me he always thought I was her favorite. Maybe she didn’t have a favorite.) Edward was the firstborn, and he was everything a Jewish mother at that time wanted in a son: responsible, focused, very good with money, with a career picked out and a plan of how to get there. Everything about him said he’d be the successful one.

  To my mother, I was the irresponsible son. I didn’t have a career plotted out from when I was a kid. And for some reason I was always losing things, which drove her crazy. I’d get a baseball glove for my birthday and lose it the next day. I’ve come to recognize a trait in me, that as soon as I get something I want I don’t much care about it anymore—like that night at the Hall of Fame ceremony. My mother got so fed up with me losing my things, one year when I got ten dollars for my birthday she made me give it to Edward. As cruel and unfair as that sounds, I’ve come to understand it. He was the opposite of me—extremely thrifty. Extremely. She knew that at least he’d use that money, not lose it like I would. He bought a parakeet with it, which really made me crazy. Because of Skippy I hated animals by then.

  When Skippy showed up, life radically changed for me. Skippy was a miserable mutt, his fur black and white splotches, and all teeth. During the day he was chained up out back. At night he was moved to the utility room. He barked twenty-four hours a day. He hated me, and I hated him back. But then, Skippy hated everyone except Edward. Skippy’s sole purpose in life was to bite people. He must have nipped at me fifty times. I can still show you the scars. There was a girl in our neighborhood, Robin, who had polio. He attacked her and, as I recall it, she had to have thirty stitches. I may be exaggerating that, but he definitely bit her. Everyone in the neighborhood became aware of Skippy, and stayed away. I couldn’t have friends over because their parents wouldn’t allow it. Even our relatives wouldn’t come over. If Skippy broke free, someone was going to get nipped at.

  One of my chores was to get food out of the freezer, which was in the garage. To get to the garage, I had to go through the utility room, where Skippy was locked up. I developed a strategy. I’d open the door just wide enough to toss some food into the room, hoping to distract the dog long enough for me to run through to the garage door. Sometimes it worked, but sometimes it didn’t.

  In a bizarre way my life came to revolve around that dog. Because he was in the house, I spent as much time as I possibly could out of the house. I couldn’t wait to get to school. After school I played basketball until I had to go home at dark. When I got home I grabbed my dinner, ran up to my room, and ate alone up there. I stayed in there until morning, a prisoner in my own home. I’m sure I must have eaten some meals with my family down in the kitchen after Skippy arrived, but I swear I don’t remember any.

  This went on until I got my driver’s license. I don’t think I realized how strange it all was until other people pointed it out. When a cousin from Israel came to visit, he lasted one day hiding with me in my room before he said, “This is crazy. Come on, we’re getting out of here.” He got me started learning the trombone so at least I’d have someth
ing to do in my room.

  I can’t say that I was unhappy. I wasn’t angry, either. I was just very confused about it. I’d ask my mom, “What would make you pick this dog over me?”

  She wouldn’t say, “It’s because you’re a jerk.” She’d say, “Your brother really loves animals. He really wants to be a veterinarian. This is important to him.”

  I asked my dad, “How can you let Mom give the dog freedom in the house and not us?”

  He said, “Would you like me to leave and leave you alone with her? What else can I do? She’s not going to change.”

  He hated conflict. I suppose that by hiding in my room all the time I was dealing with the issue the way he would, by avoiding it.

  The only time I felt safe out of my room was watching TV shows like Sgt. Bilko and old Marx Brothers movies down in the den with my dad. If my father was there I felt safe to come downstairs, even though the dog was behind the door in the utility room barking endlessly through the shows. There were two couches in the den, very fifties, with heavy fabric and thin cushions. The big TV console stood on legs against a wall, and the utility room door with the dog behind it was right beside it, so that when you were watching TV it was always in your view. There was a lamp, and otherwise the room was very spare.

  But it didn’t feel barren, because my father was there. I’d put my head on my father’s lap and watch TV with him. Anytime we coughed or laughed—if we were lucky enough to catch a Marx Brothers movie we laughed our heads off—Skippy started barking and scratching at that door, like all he wanted to do was leap out and bite your throat. But I felt so safe with my dad. I loved him so much, and I could feel how much he loved me. His love for me was pure. He never asked me to do anything for him. He was my protector, my haven, and my friend.

  One of my favorite times as a kid came maybe once a month, when he and I would go play golf. It started when I was twelve or thirteen and was on the junior high school golf team. I wasn’t good, but I could play well enough to go with him. My father devoted himself entirely to supporting his family. This was the one thing he did for himself. He loved being on the golf course. He just glowed out there.

  Our journey there was beautiful, although strange. It started when he woke me up at three in the morning. He’d wake me very gently, with a big smile on his face. “Come on, let’s go.” And I’d moan and complain, although after the first few years I really was looking forward to it. I’d get dressed in my room, he’d get dressed in his. Even in summer it was a little chilly out at three in the morning, so I’d put on layers of clothes. I’d hear him coming down the stairs and follow him. Down in the kitchen we’d have some hot chocolate or something. Never a real breakfast. We’d eat later. Then we would walk a quarter of a mile, with our clubs, on the dark and quiet streets, to the bus stop.

  The golf course was at Bethpage State Park, maybe an hour’s bus ride farther out on Long Island. The bus was usually fairly empty at that hour. For me those are some of the greatest moments of my life, because I got to share them with my dad, knowing that he was going to be happy. We were going to a place where no one—not the dog, not my mother—was going to bother us.

  We’d reach the golf course just before light, sign up, and then go out to the benches there. We’d each find a bench to stretch out on and nap for an hour or two until tee time. Or I’d nap in his arms. And then we’d go out and play eighteen holes. We were always paired with two other golfers to make a foursome. We had the greatest time. We’d have lunch out there and then ride a bus home before dark. Golf has remained a very big part of my life ever since. I have a box of my dad’s handkerchiefs. Whenever I play golf, or do anything exciting or fun, I carry one of those handkerchiefs with me. I feel like he’s with me, and that makes me feel really good.

  Looking back on it, I wonder why I never asked my dad why my mother didn’t drive us or pick us up. Not once. I mean, he paid for the car, he paid for the gas, he paid for the house. I never asked him, “How could she let you take the bus?”

  Another regular journey we made was into Manhattan, to Herman’s Handkerchiefs and Scarves. They made linen handkerchiefs and scarves for women. It was a fairly big operation. I’d say my father had eight people in his accounting department. Every other Saturday or so, though the office was closed, he took the Long Island Rail Road into the city to get some work done. If I didn’t have something I had to do for school, I went with him.

  We’d leave the house around 8 A.M. Sometimes my mother even took us to the Oceanside LIRR station, about a ten-minute drive. Just being on a train with my dad was a huge deal to me. The cars were pretty new, with wide plastic seats, and there was a cafe car where you could get an egg sandwich. My dad always bought a New York Post for the trip in. So happy to be with him, I just sat next to him as he read. And I could feel how proud he was that he had his boy with him.

  The train took us into Penn Station, and from there we walked a few blocks to Herman’s. While my dad worked I’d do homework or read a book. The office was pretty dreary, a big room with no windows, eight or so desks piled with paperwork, under fluorescent lighting. No air moving, no natural light, a real shmata operation. I had never experienced anything like it. It felt like a jail to me. I was sorry that my dad had to go there every day. I could see that nothing about the work excited him. He was working to support us, not because he liked it. It was my first inkling of how the adult work world could be imprisoning. He never talked about it. Never once in our whole lives did he ever say one word about his work.

  These trips were my first look at a real job, as opposed to delivering papers. I have great respect for my dad for going into that cheerless, windowless office every day, and for anyone else who works any kind of nine-to-five job. But the sad way that place made me feel gave me, I think, my first inklings that maybe I wasn’t going to be suited for that kind of regular work. So I’m grateful to my dad for taking me there. My life might not have been the fantastic journey it has been without this early exposure to the real work world.

  The moment I waited for was when he said it was time to break for lunch. It was a high point of my life until I went to college, when we walked out of that drab place onto the streets of midtown Manhattan on a Saturday afternoon and went to a delicatessen for lunch. We sometimes went to famous ones like the Stage Deli and the Carnegie Deli, but for the most part we went to one whose name I can’t remember. I do remember that it was very narrow, with a row of maybe eight tables. In the middle of the room was a big wooden barrel of pickles. “A pickle for a nickel.” They had new and old pickles in there, but all you could see on the surface was the brine, with seeds floating in it. You reached in there with tongs, picked a pickle, and dropped it in a plastic bag.

  My dad let me order any sandwich I wanted. That was a big deal. When we went out to dinner as a family, you couldn’t order what you wanted. My mother made us order what was cheap. The sandwich I loved the most was brisket, chopped liver, and Swiss cheese with Russian dressing on rye bread. Oh my God was that good. I treasured every bite. I can still taste it. My grandmother’s cooking I had never really thought of as food in some strange way. It was just part of the fabric of my life. The Saturdays at the deli were the first time I got really excited about going to have a meal.

  My dad and I would sit at a table by ourselves. It was the closest he ever came to talking about himself, but it wasn’t much. I’d ask him a question like, “Did your dad take you for sandwiches when you were a kid?” And he’d say, “Well, not really.” I couldn’t get anything out of him about his family. I never met his dad. We were not allowed to talk about his dad. The name was never brought up in the house. My dad’s parents had a very ugly divorce, and I believe his father remarried, though to this day I truly don’t know much. I think my father went behind his mother’s back once to speak to him.

  My father’s mother, Rebecca Gordon, was the opposite of my mother’s mother. She was a large lady, maybe five foot nine, and broad. She had come over from a plac
e on the Russian-Polish border. She was very refined, read and wrote well, and she never cooked. She had two sons, my father and his younger brother Al. She and I had a special relationship, and I love her very much. She’s buried in the same cemetery in New Jersey as my mom, dad, Uncle Benny, my other grandmother, and my grandfather. I go there once a year and give her and the whole family as much love as I can.

  Where my father never spoke about his family, my mother couldn’t stop talking about them. She had a real attitude against them from as early as I can remember. They were never invited or included in our family affairs. My mother told me that because my father was the older brother, he had to support the family after the divorce. He worked in the daytime and went to night school at the Community College of New York to get his accounting degree. He wrote for and I think edited the school newspaper, while sending his brother through school and supporting his mother. He went right to work after getting his degree, and never had the money or the opportunity to get a CPA. So he remained a bookkeeper instead of an accountant, which meant he never made more than ten thousand dollars a year in his life.

  His brother Al went on to open a dress factory and become a multimillionaire. Yet he never, according to my mother, gave my father a dime—never paid him back for his education, never helped him out. It would have been so easy for him to say, “Go back and get your CPA.” Or, “Come work for me.” He never did, and that’s why my mother disliked him. According to my mother, the last straw, the event that got Al and his family banned from our home, occurred one night when I was really sick—so sick that I was in my parents’ bed rather than my own. I have no memory of this. My mother said that Al and his wife, Mildred, came over and brought me one of those Chinese magic boxes where you put a penny in, shut it, and when you open it the penny has disappeared. Supposedly they gave it to me, then came back upstairs and took the penny out. That’s how cheap they were, my mother said. And from that night on they didn’t come back, whether by their choice or her request I’ll never know.