Just A Memory

COTTLE, THOMAS J.

JUSTA MEMORY THOMAS J. COTTLE The world of David Kanter, a fourteen-year-old boy with good looks, with his father's slight build and his mother's soft green eyes (including their look of worry, as...

...The phrase implies the presence of some sort of shield, a tangle of telephone wires...
...Oh, you know," Menachim's voice sounded wistful...
...To get free what others paid for was to be patronized, pure and simple...
...But what was so important, I wondered, about his resembling his parents...
...Beautiful," Yankel said respectfully...
...My father wants me to talk to you...
...Everybody went into it too, the entire building...
...It wasn't cold for April, just wet, miserably wet...
...They did a great job too, because knowing on some of the days you celebrate Sukkot it has to rain, they fixed it so people could go into it without walking outside...
...We had furniture in there too...
...You want to know something, Mr...
...JUSTA MEMORY THOMAS J. COTTLE The world of David Kanter, a fourteen-year-old boy with good looks, with his father's slight build and his mother's soft green eyes (including their look of worry, as if he were some sort of fugitive), was a world of trouble...
...He thinks they are because most Jews are successful at no matter what they try...
...You Jewish...
...They're really hypocritical about it...
...Guido's...
...I don't know what I do that gives them that impression...
...So they worry about you, so what...
...I'm never going to go to one of those schools, so what's the point in looking at them...
...They can't expect anyone to believe they're really going to buy anything when they barely have enough money to live where we live now...
...Why should it...
...In all the years of interviewing, sitting opposite another person, hearing him speak about his life, there have been innumerable occasions when I have disagreed profoundly with some utterance, some opinion...
...That's what my family always says...
...I had unconsciously built an entire case, as a prosecuting attorney might, to demonstrate before a public court that this boy was a disgrace to himself, his family, me...
...That's just in case you forgot the cast of characters...
...Listen," Menachim saved me...
...Goodbye...
...What's wrong with home...
...You want to...
...And I don't know whether I'm going to be rich or famous or poor and maybe even dead in two hours from now...
...April showers bring May flowers...
...My father kept telling me to bring all the boxes down with me so I wouldn't have to make the trips, but I didn't want to...
...see it, I was to blame...
...We were sure the wind would blow it away, which was really too bad since my mother and Mrs...
...They worry about me getting into trouble when I sleep, for Chrissake...
...Everything, he insisted, had a price, and if he didn't pay he was being treated as a poor man, and this would tear at his heart...
...If I had told him once I had told him a thousand times: "Menachim, I shall not see David as a patient...
...Maybe my mother a little, too...
...You can't dictate the form in which it comes...
...Head down, fingers rummaging about in the hamburger crumbs and film of grease on his plate...
...But one watches for these and tries to guard against them...
...What for...
...Okay...
...But no one wanted to speak of any of it...
...It was his parents I was thinking about as I approached the little restaurant where David and I had arranged to meet...
...She tell you that...
...If you like...
...I guess I give them reason to worry once in a while...
...Almost every white kid I know doesn't like the idea of black kids coming into the school...
...Listen, I'm lucky he's still willing to call himself a Kanter...
...You my dad's friend...
...It was really beautiful...
...His own wife and children had perished in a Polish Thomas J. Cottle, whose memoirs are of real people, is Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School...
...For this discovery, as Yankel would say, you don't win medals...
...That's years ago...
...My being Jewish make any difference...
...What's not going on...
...The scene was as proverbial as one could conceive...
...With practically each sentence his tone would change...
...David was shaking his head...
...Cottle...
...I thought it was the biggest waste of time in my life...
...So what did you want to talk to me about...
...We had a sukkah, you know what that is...
...Cottle...
...Sometimes you'd think they have me sized up to be the Jewish Al Capone or something...
...He said no wind would blow it over and the places where it leaked wouldn't cause any problems...
...The history of the Jews, the history of World War Two, Israel...
...So you think I'm crazy...
...So they push and push and when the kids don't end up like they want them to, they weep and cry and send for guys like you...
...But they said, 'Do it for Yankel, do it for Grandma Rose and Papa Morris...
...Suddenly Menachim's voice was alive again...
...All right...
...He refused my invitation to drive him home...
...But when they don't, then I think they should stay away...
...Ask my parents...
...My tone was quiet, but rude...
...My cause isn't the Germans or concentration camps or whatever they talk about...
...Whether it's going to go off, nobody can say, not even you, David, you who are trying so hard to convince people the world is terrific and you're in command of everything...
...Yankel thinks you're the answer...
...Yeah...
...Why should that have anything to do with what I feel about black kids coming into my school...
...He was not expecting me to respond...
...I didn't believe him for a second...
...I don't know much about it...
...And next, my mother's always so fussy about the kind of person I bring home, I stopped doing it because you never know with her whether these kids are going to pass her test...
...I hear the ticking...
...That's a very touching story," I said quietly...
...It was terrific...
...Yankel has no children," I interrupted unthinkingly...
...I don't hate him for what he's trying to do...
...I don't think it's all that much...
...They were looking out, hoping for the rain to stop...
...He reached a hand up to silence it, then quickly looked to see whether I had noticed him...
...Not in so many words...
...If I had to go into the army when there wasn't even a war, I'd find that more interesting than getting bar mitzvahed...
...So, maybe that says something about your feelings about being Jewish...
...I threw my coat over a chair as we sat down...
...So...
...you're some kind of a shrink, aren't you?' I'll bet that's what they said too...
...Perlman had made all this food...
...I go to school with lots of guys whose fathers left their families, you know...
...I started to hang up the phone...
...I'm perfectly content being here with you, David...
...I'm calling it a holocaust...
...You aren't going to get anywhere with him...
...But what the hell, nothing comes cheap, and when you want the whole world to sit up and take notice, the cost has to be high...
...My mother talk to you toq< about how I'm difficult to get along with...
...It's that Jews being special business of theirs, and I'm more honest than they are about it...
...I'll talk to you in a few days...
...You want to know the trouble I get into...
...Does she tell you about any of these choices...
...See what it looks like out there?' Why the hell should I go...
...They make too much noise, or they don't do anything with their lives...
...He doesn't do so great in school like Jewish boys are supposed to do, right...
...death camp, as had Morris' wife, Menachim's mother...
...But if you want to know what's on my mind about him, I'll say it...
...It's just rain," he answered softly...
...He's always worried about me...
...A good friend...
...And that's what it is to you too, new friend...
...But why not...
...It's amazing how you see people standing in the doorway and all those memories come back, although you'd think since that was such a nice time I'd remember it more often...
...You're the big friend of Yankel's and my father's...
...I'll be damned if I know what it is, but I'll also be damned if I'll treat you as though it weren't there...
...I remember they had lovely colors painted on the canvas...
...And those guys weren't half as bad off as my father...
...If I like somebody, I'll be friends with them...
...Then the two of them start clipping ads for houses out of the newspapers...
...Not with this much water," I said good naturedly...
...Talking...
...It's a strange expression, "getting through" to someone...
...Lots of people want something, but won't settle for just any form of it...
...It was just a memory...
...My father doesn't like the idea that I don't want new ones coming into the school...
...First, they tell us we shouldn't mix with Christian families...
...If he had the money but the house he wanted was a thousand miles from another Jewish family he'd buy the house...
...They never get off my back...
...Jews aren't special...
...My father can't stand living where we live...
...David was shaking his head when suddenly he began staring at the people huddled in the doorway...
...I don't care...
...What he didn't know was the uneasiness I was experiencing...
...Or they'll say, 'There's a good temple and a nice Jewish community.' That's always very important...
...He hates himself...
...I felt embarrassed...
...They even go looking at the high schools...
...There's no excuse for it, there's no excuse for it, that's all I ever hear him say...
...Yes, he does...
...He hasn't done anything particularly great since he came to this country...
...You have a talis, David...
...They never make it big so they want to make sure my generation won't be like them...
...There is always a danger of one's prejudgments arising in the process of conversations, any conversations...
...I'm not going to do that...
...Then my father stood up and told everybody not to worry...
...I wouldn't say he's stuck up...
...Are we done...
...You and he are friends, so none of this is going to be new to you...
...I had gone to meet David Kanter prepared not only to dislike him, but to prove to him that he was a disloyal son, grandson and grandnephew, a disloyal Jew...
...He is a contributing editor to moment...
...And he doesn't have a lot of Jewish friends like he's also supposed to do, right...
...You want to come along, David...
...Anyway, one of the nights it rained...
...And Yankel, who acts like a famous rabbi and spends his time thinking about the war and how horrible it was because he's so afraid if he doesn't think about what happened maybe he'll forget about it and believe it was all just in his imagination...
...So we argue, fight it out with words, ideally ending up as friends, a bit closer perhaps than before, although sometimes a bit farther apart...
...You want to know how it makes a difference...
...His hair line would never recede, the wrinkles in the forehead and around the eyes would make him appear more sensuous and kind, more intense, and a heavy beard would tell something else about him...
...Oh yes...
...David's not a good boy...
...I don't have anything...
...If I went to shul every day they'd think I was the greatest guy in the world, even if I ended up flat broke...
...David's mouth was filled with hamburger...
...Forgive me for it...
...Wear it for your bar mitzvah...
...Menachim—David's father— had told me that David had agreed to see me as long as it wasn't at home...
...David could tell from my expression that I was eager to hear what he had to say...
...His hair was drying, growing fluffy, and I swear that he looked older...
...I found myself staring at David's lovely face, imagining how he might look at my age...
...I wanted to be intensely Jewish in those minutes with David...
...So how come, if they're white, they don't agree with the other white families in the school...
...My parents are really something, aren't they...
...You know how many Jews are involved in crime...
...Me, I'm staying where it's nice and warm...
...I'll send you a bill...
...Menachim's way with his friends never changed...
...Old people were in there, and babies...
...You do it for them, not for yourself...
...But not the Jewish families...
...Probably, in some way," I answered...
...didn't say you were great...
...Anyway, to launch it in just the right way for the whole world to see, I've come up with what I think is a tremendous idea...
...So they probably told you, 'Look, go talk with sick old David 'cause he's always in trouble...
...They got good pizza here...
...You have all those people who love you...
...came Menachim's quiet response...
...I asked...
...we were four feet from one another but we might as well have been separated by a million miles...
...I'm supposed to be so great with a kid I don't even know...
...He never even looked up when he asked the question...
...knowledgeable, wise, talmudic, Jewish...
...Perhaps I had decided already that he wouldn't let me be his friend...
...And the way you've been talking it sounds like it probably wasn't your idea either...
...About what...
...I don't think she feels like a poor mother," I replied matter-of-factly...
...Send a bill...
...So they talk about how special and different Jews are...
...You want to stand outside and let the rain fall on you, that's your business...
...So who do you like, David, Lady Macbeth, Gertrude, maybe Ophelia...
...He's killing himself, too...
...Then they say we shouldn't mix with rich families...
...He's killing himself pretending he's going to make it someday when everybody knows he'll never be better off than he is now...
...I'll be all right, even though Yankel and my father are convinced I'm going to end up in reform school...
...What he is is a working class guy who never had, never will have enough money, who's afraid to be seen by a non-Jew who's going to ask him, 'If you're Jewish how come you aren't rich?' "Look it, Mr...
...But he's like the rest of them...
...Like, what happened to Yankel and my grandfather, that has nothing to do with me...
...I found myself studying David's face: long straight hair, ringlets curled by the dampness, thin nose and high cheekbones, full lips and sorrowful eyes, eyelids that rose slightly with their delicate hint of a fold...
...The rain had subsided...
...I don't know...
...It wasn't happening, and as I began to...
...We all sat around and ate...
...So talk to him, straighten him out...
...I'm sorry for it...
...A good term, don't you think...
...It's your pal, Yankel...
...I barely heard him ask...
...I know you now five minutes, and I sense it...
...Nobody's special around here...
...His brows furled, a muscle in his cheek twiched...
...Sure...
...Did they not tell you this, David...
...They live with it, but if they had a choice, they wouldn't vote that way...
...Jews don't fail...
...If we think he should see somebody and he agrees, I'll get somebody for him...
...You know those people, David...
...Why was the relationship between Yankel, Morris, Menachim and David so significant...
...What's you last name again...
...Although not as much as they make me think...
...Then it would go out, and everybody would groan and pretend to be sad...
...I don't know who they want me to be friends with...
...His great uncle Yankel knew only parts of it, David's parents a bit more...
...All these people think the same thing: If you're Jewish, you're special, you're better than everybody else...
...There was some resemblance between the boy and his parents...
...Doesn't make any difference to me whether they're Jewish or not...
...He looked about the room without letting his eyes fall on me...
...They just do it to sort of pretend they could change their life whenever they want to...
...Look it, Mr...
...You happy...
...Make any difference to you...
...You want love, you need love, you get it...
...Don't tell me what it means...
...My father told them they'd be all right, and they believed him...
...That sentiment was safer than admitting to myself that perhaps I didn't want to be close to him...
...I pushed him gently inside...
...That's a helluva speech," I heard myself say...
...I know that...
...He thinks there's only one way to be if you're Jewish, and that's rich...
...Well, I won't dwell on it, but I got the impression from speaking with your family that you preferred not to be friends with other Jewish kids...
...Because in the extraordinary wisdom of all your combined fabulous fourteen years, you see all this Jewish history, this little Jewish family life as a great big drama, a routine, acts repeated every night, dinner time performances at six-thirty when the old man gets home from his work, the work that brings in too damn little money for you...
...My mother always says, how come you don't bring kids home with you...
...Cloth coats instead of mink, no cars instead of a Cadillac, a two-bedroom apartment instead of a suburban home with a lawn, a body without a womb instead of a body intact...
...Nobody seemed to worry any more after that...
...We shook hands and went out into the rain in opposite directions...
...He always has books for me to read about young people this, young people that...
...People were rushing anywhere to get inside, under cover...
...It's not good when Jews talk this way...
...Do it...
...That's right, you have to...
...I felt his anger and confusion...
...I do a little, they worry a lot...
...I don't want to disappoint you, but they say it to everybody who'll listen to them, especially Yankel...
...David was asking...
...Well, first off, kids my age don't bring other kids home with them that much...
...Hitler went to your great uncle and said, "Nu, Yankel, I've had an idea for a political program I'm calling National Socialism...
...These people have to be told, you'll get what you'll get when it's available...
...But the Irish families and the Polish families and the others, they don't go pretending they're rich...
...He can't stand the idea that he.isn't special...
...Suit yourself...
...It's like they think they're better than all these other people...
...For a minute, I just want to savor the word...
...In fact, sometimes I think the non-Jewish kids are better 'cause they aren't so hung up on religion...
...He said nothing...
...So my father would light it again, and we'd be happy again as this tiny little orange light came into the sukkah...
...I don't have recollections of being in a sukkah as a child...
...I got nothing against them being there when they live near here...
...But surely Yankel would have had some words about the beauty of families merely succeeding and surviving...
...I'm an expert on this type of person, David, because I am one of them...
...So they were uncles and nephews and sons and fathers...
...Just wondering...
...Now, what else am I supposed to talk about...
...He thinks he's normal about everything he does...
...My father and Yankel built it behind our apartment building, near the back stairs where they keep the garbage cans...
...Hundreds...
...Guys like my dad were never meant to be rich...
...I don't care about any of that stuff...
...You want to know what it is...
...Close to six and a half million," Hitler said...
...David was walking...
...But David waited outside, barely protected by a small metal awning, the rain dripping onto his gray hat and leather jacket...
...Yes...
...What do you think it'll cost...
...Everybody applauded when I came back, and my father lit a candle...
...Anything...
...I had to keep going up to our apartment to get more...
...Okay, not Yankel," he allowed, "but all the others...
...That's the hypocritical part because they don't like to think of themselves as not well off...
...He's gone through a lot and comes from people who've gone through a lot...
...But I'm worried about you...
...This one's dedicated to my father...
...I hate them when they lie...
...They don't like being short of money, and the whole world passing them by, which is what it's doing because they live in the past...
...And he, for good and understandable reasons, hadn't thought of the word Jewish for the entire time we spoke...
...All my father ever talks about is how he's poor, how he wishes he was living in the suburbs...
...Thousands of them probably...
...Because you're driving your parents sick, I wanted to say, and because there's a man named Yankel Kanter, you've heard of him perhaps, who insists he won't go to his grave until he finds out what is making you so tough and uncontrollable, so unhappy...
...The answer to what...
...David had left me speechless...
...David Kanter stood outside Guido's on a day when a drenching rain was falling on Boston...
...And David, about that time bomb metaphor...
...Everybody had a wonderful time, even though it got so dark nobody could see that well...
...He was bar mitzvahed and he went to Hebrew school, which he hated, but he isn't a good Jew...
...Forgive me too, for still believing that a bomb is there...
...he answered flatly...
...If I desired to come back with a lecture of my own, he was braced for that, but my words would bounce off him...
...Tell me, Manny," I asked my friend, "what the hell is going on with David that I don't know about, or am supposed to know about or not know about...
...Just wanted to get to know you," I said...
...Maybe you just like it 'cause it makes me sound like Yankel and my father want me to be...
...They wanted me to be bar mitzvahed, so I'm bar mitzvahed...
...They reminded me when I was small, like five or six...
...they made their own children into failures...
...No, David, your Mom wept to me...
...He hates the neighborhood, our house, the other people who live in the building...
...David's not a good Jew...
...Especially when it rains...
...Yeah, I could go for a pizza," I said, my tone hopelessly artificial, as though I honestly believed there were no problems in the world anymore...
...You know, Menachim, you really are becoming a pest...
...I guess my family worries about me," David was saying...
...All she wants, David, is for her husband and her only child to be happy, to accept what they are and do the best they can...
...She spends too much time judging people, seeing whether they're right for us...
...Tom...
...One time I told him, 'How come you do this when you know you're never going to buy a house?' He said he was just about to put a down payment on a house when he found out from somebody there was a lot of strong anti-Jewish feelings in that community...
...You change it...
...But not too expensive," Menachim would interject, "and you must let me pay you...
...But with David, a new feeling had been evoked in me: No matter how I turned his words over in my head, they kept making me feel ashamed...
...The afternoon was over...
...You have to...
...Everybody cares what happens to them, except people like Yankel whose whole life ended a long time ago...
...You want to tell me...
...Poor Mother...
...I don't know...
...Forgive me for siding with Yankel and your father...
...He doesn't expect anything of his father and Yankel, but he sure expects everything of himself...
...There's a time bomb in you, David, I said to myself...
...Yankel Kanter created Hitler...
...Yankel's up here, your Grandfather's over here, your Dad's over here, your Mother's over here, your Grandmother Rose is over here, and in the grave, flesh rotten into the emptiness of coffins, is one Grandmother and one Grandfather...
...I lifted my head and nodded...
...They don't honestly think anybody in the world anymore actually believes that once you go through that nonsense you're really a man...
...Then it would be light, while this one little candle, which / had carried down, would flicker...
...The candles we had kept going out...
...S'up to you...
...No...
...He would be home before I even made it to the next blurry red light...
...No...
...He'd never admit it, but he feels a Jew who isn't successful or a somebody shouldn't be alive probably...
...I'm not any different from anybody else...
...Everybody stayed there and forgot about the weather, and my father was the most important person there because he was the one who made the sukkah...
...Meeting here wasn't my idea...
...Everybody was waiting for the thing to come down, it was only made of canvas and rope...
...They're for integration...
...They're the ones who failed...
...Your father's a good guy, I thought...
...I actually had a great time running after candles...
...neither one of us had yet defined what this conversation was to be about...
...David's derision was as subtle as the smell of pizza in Guido's...
...But he's no different from other men around here...
...How's me and his mother for starters...
...David glanced toward the windows...
...You're even better, they think, if you're a Jewish criminal...
...I'll have a hamburger...
...We haven't had a sukkah in years, thank God...
...Suddenly his face turned toward me and 1 found his eyes, mysteriously darker than they seemed before...
...I feel sorry for him...
...Because rich families in the suburbs are for integration and the Jewish people, like in this neighborhood, want to pretend they're more like the suburban families than they're like the families who live around here...
...Where you meeting David...
...But the only thing he ever thinks about is how there's no reason for him to be doing as badly as he is...
...We got black kids going to our school...
...Well David, that's the way it is with some memories and dreams...
...They return to us almost by accident, it seems, night travellers knocking on doors with the light so dim they can barely see, believing they have found their own homes, when, by accident, they have reached a prior home, the home of their childhood, perhaps...
...I asked...
...Every three months he comes up with a new plan for moving...
...Yes...
...To see him sitting there, slouched in his chair, one would never suspect he could have delivered such a statement...
...Cottle, this can't be the best thing you got to do with your time, to come around a place like this and talk to a kid like me...
...Even with all their problems they must see that kids see right through these ceremonies...
...Maybe it would have been better if he died with his wife...
...I asked...
...Poor Mom, she can't control her only son...
...They're like a couple of children cutting out paper dolls...
...You eat...
...You like pizza...
...You want to hear what's wrong with my father...
...First, we're going here, then we're going there...
...Do it for the memory of this one, or that one.' Why...
...I love it," Yankel said...
...I only want to meet him, befriend him...
...But no, Yankel or Grandma Rose, they teach you, Jews don't break the law...
...then she'll be happy...
...The rich are special...
...I loved running up in the dark, groping around, you know, going to the kitchen, getting the candles, feeling my way down the stairs into the basement which always was such a scary place for me, except that night, or that week really, when they made the sukkah...
...If he ever stopped to talk to them he'd find out he's just like them...
...There was nothing I could have done or said, I felt, that would have allowed us to become friends...
...Kanter," I began, letting him hear my own frustration, "I'm beginning to think that that business of Jews answering a question with a question is true...
...We were like those people at the door, looking up, almost praying the weather would get better, or the sukkah would blow away...
...Such a shabby place...
...In fact, most of them were a whole lot happier than he is...
...Did your Mom talk to me...
...If that's the trouble they think I'm causing then I don't happen to think it's getting into trouble...
...You want to know the truth...
...David's toughness had returned...
...You're lucky, my friend, I whispered...
...Simple...
...In minutes I was caught in evening traffic, the piercing white lights of the cars and the outlines of tired, frustrated drivers trapped in their machines...
...All I wanted to say was that if you want to know what's going on in my family, the person to talk to is my father...
...I don't care for flowers...
...Why should I do things all the time just to please them...
...It was a premature assessment, as patronizing as it was presumptuous...
...First anger, then penitence, then anger all over again...
...Maybe it does...
...I never once gave a flying shit about any of it...
...I mean, I'm not sure what you do, but whatever it is you must have better things to do with your time...
...Everyone was disappointed because my father and Yankel had worked so hard, and the women had spent so much time making food, but nobody wanted to leave...
...Who they trying to kid...
...He could accept nothing for free...
...You like it," he said, learning forward, "here's another one...
...And I can't stand him lying to himself...
...You want me to tell you how your mother wept when she spoke to your father and me one ' Saturday afternoon when nobody knew where you were and they feared you had gotten into trouble...
...You get a load of this day...
...I was watching out as usual, but finding myself indulging in the most primitive feelings I could ever remember having in the course of conducting my research...
...A little steep," Yankel replied...
...Is it...
...Doesn't sound too Jewish, eh...

Vol. 4 • July 1979 • No. 7


 
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