Portraits At A Condominium
Kupfer, Fern
PORTRAITS ATA CONDOMINIUM From Bialystok to Brooklyn to Boca Raton FERN KUPFER The Bronx, 1949 I am standing on a chair pulled up to the kitchen counter, watching my grandmother, her fingers...
...Oh, what a strange tribal migration: From Bialystok to the Bronx to Boca Raton...
...The women wear white pants and blouses in colorful hot pinks, yellows...
...My parents' complex has an attempted quaintness: Like a New England fishing village, the streets surrounding the man-made lake are called Dorchester Court, Martha's Vineyard, Worcester Way...
...Always there is talk of someone's heart attack, someone's colostomy, of a woman who "just lost her husband...
...They're happy to be alive...
...Look, this is our place and you're a guest here...
...she asks...
...My mother at 63, brown and freckled under that blue sky, running across the court, an overhand swing that sails the ball evenly toward the far right corner: It's in...
...Put it on...
...I balk, slightly...
...The red-haired woman continues to bob toward deeper water and covers his cheeks with noisy kisses until the water reaches his neck...
...Herb, I want you to meet my family...
...The child squeals with delight as the water hits his legs, then his waist, then his chest...
...I'm not sure it's for me either...
...Why do I have to wear it...
...My mother says that she can always spot the second marriages in the supermarket, those peaceful and cooperative couples who take joy together in their discovery of specials on cans of tuna and 3/$l .00 yogurt...
...But my father briefly seconds the opinion...
...My parents and their friends laugh sometimes at the infirmities, at themselves...
...The smells of pot roast, of soup greens simmering on the stove, fill the small apartment, clinging to brocade, to the overstuffed furniture in the other room...
...she says...
...Now, in my mother's bedroom, a room with white walls and white carpet and plenty of mirrors, we are haggling over a bathing suit, a gift she offers but which I'm not sure I want...
...I hear him yelling across the pool at someone who is about to jump in: "Did you shower...
...Carol...
...As a young woman, in this country not more than a year, she was "issued a citation" at Coney Island for taking off the black cotton stockings that, at the beginning of the century, were deemed appropriate beachwear...
...Well, I liked it when I tried it on in the store but then when I got it home, I thought that it really wasn't for me," she says...
...Better," they say in mock seriousness...
...A boney arm moves slowly out over the lettuce...
...Some of the shoppers are in tennis shorts, the women in crisp culottes or sun dresses, looking tan and peppy...
...A woman in her late 20s with auburn hair and nails the color of late summer plums gets up from her chair, comes over with a tiny football jersey, number 66...
...My daughter, who has heard this story, agrees—they must hate kids...
...today the daughters can be the doctors...
...and now, especially among the new condominium dwellers, daughters will be, too...
...You bought a suit like that...
...She just longed to feel the soft sand between her toes, the warmth on her bare skin...
...It's just that, well, the people here want a quiet place to live and they're retired so they have a lot of time on their hands...
...has become a condominium in-joke...
...I put in, he takes out...
...West Palm Beach, 1982 My mother's arm, holding her tennis racket overhead, is sure and still for the serve...
...Herb...
...The white identification tag, which reveals that I am indeed a bona fide guest of condominium residents and not a gate-crashing rowdy out for a free swim, is folded in my towel...
...Cowed, I put the tag on my wrist and shut my eyes, feeling the sun again on my face as he moves off...
...The suit is very provocative and uncomfortable...
...My parents and their condo cohorts think of themselves as active members in life's community, a lively group...
...A younger old crowd...
...No splashing," he bellows...
...Why don't they just put up one big sign: 'NO...
...We're waiting to see you back on the greens soon, Al...
...Hi," they shout, "Hi ya," one after the other, waving merrily...
...Well, it's a younger crowd," he explains...
...He is in a plaid bathing suit and shirtless, but he has the officious air of someone in uniform...
...Removing the hose was not a political act...
...I don't see your I.D...
...No," says red-headed N-A-N-A, still in the pool...
...I make a mental "click-click" to preserve this shot, her shot, in my mind...
...She would like it here, so near the beach...
...My own ten-year old daughter looks up from her Judy Blume book with raised eyebrows...
...Our last day of vacation, we go to the beach, and my mother, my daughter and I take a long walk by the ocean, picking up shells, stopping to look at the waves as they crest, lulled by the gentle roar...
...Well, you see I have it...
...She muses to my grandfather, who is drinking a glass of tea at the table...
...He is getting a nasty tone now, whereas before he was merely bossy...
...I do wonder if my daughter will tell her child tales of this condominium life...
...Later I see another man with a Pool Committee button on his straw sun hat reprimanding some children who are too enthusiastic in their water play...
...Sons who become doctors are plentiful here...
...There is a man, bald and round, standing in my sun...
...Just wear your tag, and shower before you get into the pool, and don't dive or splash, and wear your cap...
...Here you go, sweetheart," she says to the boy...
...My parents are healthy...
...Only yesterday we were digging our way out of a snow-drifted driveway in Iowa...
...I don't know, myself...
...I have a flash of him standing by the pool in his long, blue overcoat, shrugging his narrow shoulders, paint chips still under his fingernails...
...My boy, my light, my pearl...
...I know her boy—a man approaching 40 with a thickening waist and thinning hair...
...This Florida sun is murder...
...My mother's tennis partner says that she can't play tomorrow...
...So maybe it's goodbye to all that...
...I walk with my mother and my daughter to the pool in this new suit, my own good judgment clouded by my family's not impartial praise, self-conscious at the pads of buttock spilling out beneath the scanty brief...
...So long, kids," she says to my husband and me...
...She was afraid of the big, blond policeman who wrote out the ticket (looking all the while at the stockings which lay across the blanket, the shape of her leg still outlined in them, evidence of her lewdness), afraid she would go to jail, or worse—perhaps even be deported...
...Floridians now...
...My grandmother, who never did make it to Florida, would be more appreciative...
...The condominiums in West Palm Beach have elegant names—Poinci-ana Place, The Fountains, Lake wood Estates...
...My daughter wants to know if they had condominiums in Europe...
...I wonder if there will be magic in the memories there for her as well...
...My mother tells me it looks great...
...No one seems rushed...
...Go show your father," she says, pointing me out toward the living room...
...One morning I walk with my father to buy some groceries, past a group of men riding bicycles down the tree-lined boulevard...
...If I close my eyes, I can skip across three decades in my mind, back to that kitchen in the Bronx...
...You have to wear your tag...
...Enjoy...
...Then laughing, "/ got mine from him\" The smells of roasting meats waft across the swimming pool...
...Supermarkets near the condominiums prepare for the invasion, stocking up on Pampers and sand pails and first-cut briskets of beef...
...Enjoy...
...Then she places him with a wet plop by the side of the pool and calls out...
...My boy is coming...
...says my mother's tennis partner, wiping the sweat from her brow...
...I stand flanked between the generations and explain to my child that when / was her age and went to the beach with my grandmother, we, too, would walk along and dig for crabs and find shells with silver-pink linings...
...Where did she learn such terms...
...Spencer smiles shyly up at the man...
...What are they so happy about...
...Herb...
...Hearing that euphemism for the first time some years ago, my daughter thought that the man had wandered off at a shopping mall...
...We go to my grandparents, to their condominium in Florida," says my daughter...
...No, I was a blondie all my life...
...This land is mine, God gave this land to me...
...I am back to being ten years old, showing Daddy the new party dress, wanting to please...
...They do seem to make themselves busy with these committees, with drafting these endless rules and regulations...
...huge, brass-based floor lamps...
...The apartment is European dark, heavy with pillows...
...The condominium itself is named Covered Bridge, and a wooden bridge, new but authentically rickety, spans a narrow bit of lake...
...No, of course not, I tell her...
...Have you tried the poo-poo platter at the new Dragon Sky Restaurant at Oceanridge Plaza...
...Chlorine, feh...
...Put a shirt on him...
...I mention to Dad that all the people here seem in such good shape...
...That's no good there...
...Are they afraid of the neighborhood going bad...
...And she'd be too poor anyway to own one, right...
...Lawyers, too, are common as high blood pressure...
...I loved to hear his stories about life on the Lower East Side, about sleeping out on fire escapes on sweltering nights, of choosing a two-cent pickle from the barrel for an afternoon treat...
...When one of us dies, I think I'll go to Florida...
...And accountants...
...We, the "kids," are the third generation of immigrant Jews who left the poverty and persecution of Eastern Europe for a chance in the New World...
...It's gotta be visible at all times...
...Oh, your kids are here already...
...Her black bathing suit is low-cut, around her neck is a gold chain with the letters N-A-N-A dangling between two ample breasts...
...I don't feel old...
...The other sons and daughters of the condominium owners lie spread-eagled, greased, across plastic chairs...
...And we'd look out over the ocean, only we were at a beach in New York, not Florida, and my grandma would tell me to look across and I'd see Europe—although I never could—that Europe was where she was born...
...The son, Marty, is an anesthesiologist who, according to his mother, is doing "very well," pulling in the big bucks as he puts people to sleep...
...Dangerous eyesores, when you get right down to it...
...And some older people are just grouchy," I tell my daughter...
...Once, poolside, I heard a woman introduce her son as the therapist for the West Coast...
...She had loved the beach...
...he asks...
...I am not used to being spoken to so rudely, having lived the last ten years in the Midwest, where one would never be ordered about by a stranger or waiters or a clerk at the motor vehicle bureau...
...Coming up behind her is an even more ancient little man using his'shopping cart as a walker...
...The suit is an electric green with a high-cut leg...
...You get your red hair from your Grandma, huh...
...Rusty cages...
...My mother complains that my father takes things out of the cart...
...What would they think about this life...
...As my mother says, "It's some life...
...They all know Dad...
...You know what I think, Lou...
...But they were probably grouchy as younger people, too...
...Going to see Grandma no longer means a Sunday drive out to Brooklyn or the Bronx...
...Looks great," he says and goes back to the newspaper...
...Cause that's the rule...
...The sky, the water, the black-paved roads all reflect the light, seem laminated by it...
...They have enough money to be "comfortable" and are in good health, knock wood...
...He calls, "So Sarah, vere ya running...
...Today in the shallow middle of the pool is a red-haired woman in her mid-60s bobbing towards deeper water with a little boy, also redheaded, in her arms...
...He would say, "I don't know from swimming pools...
...The teacher asks her fourth-grade class, "And what do you do for the holidays...
...There are people here who run the show, obsessed by rules and standards, frantic in their determination lest...
...In America, he painted houses for a living, high, high on scaffolds taller than any building in his native village, and shared a tenement room with three other young men who had come off the boat with empty pockets and big dreams...
...This is my daughter Carol, from Westchester, and this," she waves her arm with a flourish to number 66, now shivering by the pool's edge, "this is Spencer...
...I get many such gifts this way...
...The spirit of my grandparents hovers amid the palm trees...
...Sometimes there is exaggeration among members of this group that has apparently spawned only professionals...
...The rule says you hafta shower before you swim...
...My mother's tennis partner walks off down the trail to her own village, Nantucket Circle...
...A friend who was staying with her folks at their condo in Fort Lauderdale said that her teenagers ("who are really good kids") were continuously hassled whenever they used the facilities...
...As a matter of fact, he is wearing a button pinned onto the elastic waist band of his swim suit: Pool Committee, it says...
...The supermarket is filled with shoppers, mostly the well-kept elderly from the condominiums...
...I say that they probably do now, although they didn't when her great-grandma was born, which was almost one hundred years ago...
...Good shot, Grandma," yells my daughter from behind the fence...
...There does seem to be an over-zealous law-and-order streak to condominium life...
...How come there are so many rules...
...There are more men here than in an ordinary suburban market during daytime hours, some alone with their lists, adjusting reading glasses as they hold two packages of cereal aloft to compare prices...
...My daughter is afraid of these Pool Committee men and wants me to come in with her to swim...
...Welcome back to Snowbirds Sylvia and Harold Hemmings...
...They wear purple sandals and golden chains...
...prods his grandmother...
...Wordlessly, I hold it up...
...My grandfather would tell me, "Two dollars to my name and didn't speak von vord of English," his voice trembling as it rose, as if to emphasize the peril...
...Some married couples shop together, although my parents never do...
...It is for them, released from the pressures and responsibilities of working and raising a family, a good time of life...
...Four peaches in a plastic bag...
...They eat green vegetables and fiber and get plenty of exercise...
...I stare mesmerized as the doughy flabs of her busy arm sway rhythmically to the clop-clop of the blade against the wood, like horses' hooves on cobblestone...
...and a sofa whose legs claw the living room floor...
...By my reverie is interrupted by a harsh voice: "Where's your tag...
...Can you say hi to Herb...
...oriental scatter rugs in dusky rose and faded teal...
...And college professors...
...my daughter asks, having heard the immigrant stories third hand from me, so watered down by now that you could no longer taste the brine from those wooden pickle barrels...
...Condominium is a word she has correctly pronounced since nursery school, when she knew that milk came from cows and babies grew in mothers' tummies and grandparents lived in condominiums...
...Dee-licious...
...More, Grandma...
...My grandfather, who had seen the Czar in a passing parade, in West Palm Beach...
...The teenager sloughs off sourly toward the outdoor stall...
...The Florida sun is so bright that the landscape seems washed, splashed by light...
...yells N-A-N-A from the pool to a man reading the New York Times in the shade of a palm frond...
...My grandmother, who is always hot even in winter, wears a sleeveless cotton dress under her apron and fans herself as she looks out of the fifth-floor window at the grimy New York snow...
...He smirks sarcastically...
...He puts in, I take out...
...They laugh a lot when they play bridge together and look forward to dinner parties and visits from the kids...
...It's okay," I assure her...
...My husband is already at the pool and he whistles softly as I walk by his chair...
...I can't really believe my life went so damn fast...
...Then he puts in cookies when I'm not looking...
...They read them as they lie on lounge chairs by the pool...
...French-cut," says my mother...
...The man asks silent Spencer, "Where'd you get that red hair from...
...It is a life that exists now only in memory and in those novels, the shtetl-to-success stories that are popular with my parents' friends...
...More," he yells, making giddy-up-horsie motions with his body...
...Really, what's so great about fire escapes...
...In the Condo News this week, congratulations are announced to Rose and Abe Feinblatt, who have a new grandson Joshua Elliott...
...The status acclaimed by "my daughter who married a doctor" will no longer be the ultimate nachas...
...PORTRAITS ATA CONDOMINIUM From Bialystok to Brooklyn to Boca Raton FERN KUPFER The Bronx, 1949 I am standing on a chair pulled up to the kitchen counter, watching my grandmother, her fingers clenched around a sharp cleaver, her knuckles protruding white and shiny, as she chops onions in a wooden bowl...
...They must really hate kids," her daughter said...
...At night, sitting with a cool drink on the patio, you can hear an ambulance wail down by the road...
...I took a look at him when he was born and went out and did mine red, too...
...Their reply to that casual cliche, "How are you...
...The children are coming, pasty-faced from frigid New York and the blustery Midwest, ready for their week in the sun...
...My mother initially bought it for herself...
...A small package of grapes...
...I'd rather go by myself...
...lest what...
...I say to my father...
...My mother smiles, surprised at being able to pay senior citizen rates in the movie theater...
...It's Christmas vacation, and "the children are coming" is a cry spread across the Southern peninsula...
...She is going to make ready her home, to stock the shelves, to cook the favorite foods of his childhood...
...Just then in the produce department we see a frail old woman, 90 if she's a day, taking tiny, bird-like steps as she moves about the oranges...
...It goes deeper, perhaps, to the concepts of power and control for people who no longer effect changes in the real world, to minds set in the foundations of talmudic legality, to pride of ownership...
...Am I old...
...My boy is coming," she says proudly...
...No, Grandma bought it," says our daughter blandly, not in the least astonished at a tennis-playing grandmother who buys French-cut bathing suits...
...Our best wishes for a speedy recovery to Al Ruben following his successful triple bypass surgery last week...
Vol. 8 • January 1983 • No. 2
