Menachem (Continued)
Cottle, Tom
MENACHEM (CONTINUED) TOM COTTLE Neither Menachem nor his wife, Linda, attended college. Instead, both took jobs — Linda as a file clerk, Menachem with a taxi company. Every now and then, he'd try...
...Just give me a 30-thousand-a-year position in your pressed wood industry and I'll be more than happy to wear beautiful clothes like you and get educated all over again so I can have an intelligent and mature conversation with your eight-year-old grandson...
...I don't blame them for not inviting us out there more than once a year...
...She talked better, she looked better, she played beautifully...
...Terrific guy...
...You know what he does...
...Lots of people take cabs...
...If there was one building on that property, there were 15...
...I drive people on welfare to the welfare office now and again...
...Everyone could see who was the underside of the family...
...I probably met Weinrobe out there once or twice...
...You have steady work, and being rich isn't everything...
...Either that or I would have refused to ever leave...
...She had a room in the attic of their house, sloping roof, you know, and little windows...
...He sleeps it, breathes it, eats it...
...Nine years old and already I must have seen how wrong I was for the rich people of the world, how without class or success I was, and was going to be when I grew up...
...He never came, she knew he wouldn't, but she had the decency to invite him...
...Always...
...I remember this like it was yesterday...
...Make a date...
...There's no law that says these meetings have to come only at Christmas.' "I'll tell you something else about them...
...I catered a party for a cousin of the Haymans one night...
...Usually my job was to get there several hours before the thing started, then come back the next day, if it was a night party, to clean up...
...David was eight, and starting to ask questions about the facts of life...
...I remember when we'd leave each time, Sandy or one of her brothers would always say, 'Why don't we see them again?' I was a 'them.' 'Why do we have to wait 'til next year?' Esther, she always said, 'You can invite them any time you wish...
...Wants to know each of our names...
...No one ever talked, of course, of them coming to our house, but that was all right...
...Weinrobe, if you pity me so much, if my clothes don't look like yours and you feel sorry for me because you could ask me things I wouldn't know the answer to but your eight-year-old grandson would, hey listen, stop pitying me...
...Morris Ranter's kid...
...Paints, games, puzzles, little things to jump on, books...
...We'd go up to her room...
...I remember she was amazingly generous with her things, and she had a million and one things up there...
...The rich ones with their Christmas presents for the poor ones who celebrated Cha-nukah...
...They all felt sorry for my father and for me too, I suppose...
...Hayman would say, 'Come on, Sandy, take the kids up to your room,' and the whole bunch of us, the top side and the underside, we'd pound up those stairs to the attic...
...Hey listen, some people have to be poor in our society, so don't feel too bad about it...
...It was all right...
...Every now and then, he'd try something else, but nothing was as steady...
...I'm one of the bringers, one of the slaves is what I call myself...
...I remember how warm and cozy it always felt up there...
...How many times a week did I have to go into rich people's homes, lots of Jewish ones too, and have to be reminded that all I was in life was a caterer...
...He's in pressed board...
...Heartbreaking, now that I think of it...
...I went to parties with one or two or three other men and set up everything...
...I'll sit all day, keep my big mouth shut and listen to her play the piano and talk to me...
...No matter what, I lose with a guy like Weinrobe...
...I'd go up there and hate the fact that my father didn't allow us a Christmas tree...
...You could see what he was thinking: A Jewish guy is supposed to be managing companies like this, not shlepping out the silverware and china...
...None of the.other guys cared if he knew me but I wanted to crawl through the carpet...
...She was about, I'd say, three years older than me, but she could have been fifteen years older...
...We weren't like anybody they went to school with...
...I could take it, except for one thing...
...But he can't look at me and treat me like just another human being...
...I don't disapprove of him and the pressed board industry, whatever he does for it...
...Tells us we're free to smoke and walk around and eat and drink as if we are guests...
...She and Jack had a kid, Sandra, played the piano so well...
...Everything...
...I thought of spending the rest of my life sitting in a chair listening to her talk and play the piano...
...And I wouldn't have said a word for the rest of my life so nobody would ever hear me and know how I didn't fit there at all...
...It was as a set-up man for a catering firm, and the pay was good...
...They invited Yankel too...
...Oh yes, he's thinking, you're the poor side of the family, the handout cases, the father who couldn't make it who maybe had some excuses because he was a refugee and the son who didn't do much better, worse maybe in some people's eyes, although he had a lot of excuses too...
...That was always terrific...
...I say eight-year-old, probably because I had an eight-year-old son myself when I quit the catering business...
...It's not for me...
...I remember thinking after one of those parties, why can't I marry her...
...Nine years old, that's all I was...
...All right, you drive a cab, you get rich people, middle class people...
...I never even heard of pressed board before that night...
...women too...
...I also drive a taxi.' He'd have dropped dead...
...We held our own, but as I look back on it, we didn't have their style and they must have known it...
...Morris's kid, right?' His cousins told him...
...I could barely talk with her, I felt so stupid...
...Everything he wants he just snaps his fingers and people bring him...
...Not where babies come from, but what does daddy do for a living...
...She was Jewish and she had all those things, so what was wrong with us...
...So they gave us great presents...
...When I drive the cab, I pretend people are expecting that I do other things...
...If it was clothes, they always managed to fit, I'll tell you that...
...If it was an afternoon party we'd come back that night...
...Once, he came close, but the job proved too uncomfortable...
...A guy like that, he doesn't know from shlepping china cases and boxes of tea cups...
...If my name were Smith, or O'Shaughnessy, maybe he wouldn't care about it so much...
...I'd have made her marry me and play the piano for me and just talk to me...
...Eleven years old, twelve years old, fantastic...
...When I was a kid, like David, once a year we'd go to a little get-together at Jack Hayman's house...
...I want people to cater to me...
...What I want to say to him is, 'I'm a medical student,' or 'I'm studying for the state bar exam, so to make some money I do this on the side.' Or I'm an actor, or a painter...
...He tells us we can stay as long as we want...
...So I get there, you know, about five, six hours before this affair is supposed to start, and Mr...
...That's more than we're always able to do in our family...
...Menachem explained his discomfort years later: "It was a simple enough job...
...Jack Hayman was a sweet man...
...Weinrobe...
...You know where the party was...
...Or I'm going to be a politician and I thought all these little jobs would help me to learn about the working class...
...You think a kid like that wants to grow up thinking his dad lugs dishes to rich people's houses...
...that's what made it so cozy to me...
...I loved those sloping walls she had though...
...Weinrobe is the guy's name...
...You see the uneasiness with people like Mr...
...Fabulous room...
...It was like a store in that attic room, like Christmas itself, you know what I mean...
...I saw it as the perfect way of life and she must have felt the same way...
...They lived way the hell and gone from here in acres of farm...
...But from Jack you got a day...
...There or anywhere, for that matter...
...She called him up herself...
...But Menachem Kanter...
...But not the facts of life most people think...
...She played Chopin, she played modern things, jazz...
...What can I say...
...I don't know what I fell in love with in those days: the girl, the family, the house, the toys...
...Gives us all a drink, the Clinical psychologist Tom Cottle's most recent report on his conversations with members of the Kanter family appeared in moment in May 1982...
...I don't know what all those kids thought about us undersides...
...I used to call it my one day a year in paradise...
...Thank God I didn't know what the hell I was thinking about when I was nine...
...Hey, Mr...
...Weinrobe comes to say hello to me and all the men working...
...There must be some mistake...
...He knows big money...
...It was just their way of being nice...
...We could have had them...
...Anyway, he comes to me and I tell him who I am...
...That's the sense of failure I live with...
...If I have to work for someone, like you do in the taxi business, at least I don't have to have the reminder of it every day in the form of a guy breathing down my neck, or a rich man in a firm looking at me with such confusion and pity in his eyes...
...She would have had to feel this way...
...No matter what he tells you, he can't do it...
...We weren't actually relatives of theirs...
...Every minute you work it's a reminder of what a failure you are...
...I thought of marrying Sandy Hayman...
...In a garage where he kept his cars...
...From his brother Erwin you got a New" Year's card, Jewish, right...
...But in the catering business, you're always in the homes of rich people, or setting up at a temple or church...
...I'd have sat up there in her attic and cried...
...My God, that girl must have had a small library by the time she was twelve...
...You just see it in his eyes...
...But when the guy pins me down I'm left all to myself to be what I am, which is not a helluva lot to brag about...
...I'm embarrassed...
...I envied her that...
...Either he's feeling sorry for me or he's disapproving of me...
...Ican't shake it...
...And I'm standing there wanting to tell him, 'Oh, I don't do this full time, Mr...
...It was fantastic...
...There we were in these enormous rooms in that house, the shabby ones and the wealthy ones...
...You could see it on his face...
...Usually they had it at Christmas...
...You spend every minute of your life with people and you can't get their Clothes size right...
...There was some lifting but it wasn't that bad, mostly the chests with dishes, which you had to pack carefully again...
...The garage was more beautiful than most houses you'll see...
...But Esther Hayman, she saw me once a year and always had the right size...
...Surely Sandy lived the way you want all children everywhere to live...
...Weinrobe...
...I have to laugh...
Vol. 7 • July 1982 • No. 7
