Nathan in Spite of Himself Page 2

  “I wanna hear it from him.”

  I tried remaining calm and almost succeeded. “Double bill at the Linwood, ma’am.”

  “What’s playing?” Mr. Goldfarb asked as if testing my character.

  “Um, South Pacific and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, I think it’s called.”

  He peered at me through horn-rimmed glasses. “You think it’s called?”

  “No, that’s it, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. With Ingrid Bergman.”

  His frown cut ridges in his brow.

  “Dad’s an accountant,” Diane explained. “He’s led a sheltered life.”

  “Never you mind—”

  “Oh, who cares?” Mrs. Goldfarb broke in. “My only concern is that you behave like a gentleman and get my daughter home at a decent hour. Make it ten o’clock.”

  “Mah-ahm. It’s the weekend.”

  “Eleven then. And not a minute later.”

  My date proceeded to dicker. “How ’bout not a minute later than midnight,”

  “No, young lady. Eleven o’clock or you stay home tonight. You hear me?”

  “Puh-leeeeeeze.”

  Mrs. Goldfarb pursed her lips and glanced at her husband, who shrugged.

  “You’re a big help,” she said in a whisper audible in Canada.

  Deserted by her troops, Diane’s mom surrendered. “All right, but not a second past midnight or you’ll never date again. Understand?”

  Diane nodded but her eyes registered victory. “Not a second past,” her mom warned me.

  “No, ma’am.” I tried for a smile but no doubt fell short.

  “Okay, now that that’s settled, you kids better skedaddle or you’ll be late for Miss Bergman.”

  Diane grabbed a brown camelhair coat off the couch and urged me toward the door. “’Night,” she called over her shoulder.

  We skedaddled before her mom reneged on the deal.

  #

  The two of us remained silent while emerging from the theater amid a swarm of moviegoers.

  “What’d you think?” I asked in a voice shaking from the cold.

  “They were both all right, I guess.”

  “I kinda liked South Pacific,” I confessed.

  Especially Mitzi Gaynor’s legs and, to a degree, her singing. I didn’t care for all the bigotry, though.

  Diane shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I liked being there with you.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course, silly.”

  She took my hand and we started for the parking lot behind the theater.

  “I liked it too. I mean being with you.”

  I especially liked our knees knocking in the dark and our hands touching as we groped for popcorn in the large tub we shared. By the end of South Pacific I was focused less on Emile De Becque’s chances with Nellie Forbush than on mine with Diane Goldfarb.

  After we arrived at the Dodge I opened the passenger door and Diane slid in. Her dress rose a fraction and she tugged at it, the way girls do to show their modesty. I strolled around to the driver’s side, got in and turned the key in the ignition. The motor coughed and hiccupped twice before engaging, after which I turned on the defroster to rid the windshield of its icy coating.

  “We need to wait a few minutes,” I informed Diane.

  “Good.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Am I being too forward?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  More eloquence from Cicero.

  Nevertheless Diane seemed reassured. “I want you to know I’ve liked you ever since we sat across from each other in English last year. You were so quiet, but when you said something it was intelligent, not like what those other boys … you know … what they had to say.”

  I said something intelligent? I chose not to argue.

  “I sorta hoped you’d ask me out,” Diane went on, “or at least talk to me. But when you didn’t, except maybe to say hi once in a while, I thought I’d give you a nudge.”

  “I’m glad. I can be a little dense sometimes.”

  If only this were modesty. Yet even I recognized a chance to advance the cause, so I drew Diane closer and kissed her. Softly at first, then considerably harder. Much to my surprise, to say nothing of delight, she kissed me back with equal intensity. Then, like a yutz, I pulled away.

  I needed to go slow, I rationalized. This was our first date, so if I tried anything—to go further, that is—I’d only aggravate her and screw everything up.

  Diane laid her head on my shoulder. “That was nice.”

  Yes indeed. So nice, in fact, my shvantz stood at attention. I glanced at the windshield, which thankfully had cleared.

  “I guess we can go,” I said, then eased the car out of park and inched it toward the exit, allowing my pecker to settle down.

  Next time, I promised myself.

  #

  I delivered my date home with ten minutes to spare. We dallied outside her apartment, surrounded by the lingering smell of Jewish cooking, a mixture of onions, garlic, schmaltz, borscht, cabbage and corned beef. Diane and I kissed again, more chastely this time, and I promised to call her.

  She said I better.

  With pay dirt in sight, she could count on it.

  Chapter 4

  I sat in my usual spot at the kitchen table, watching my mom set it for breakfast. Hardly anything my parents did was interesting to me, but I admit to being fascinated by how Mom distributed glasses, silverware and ceramic plates as if the fate of the world depended on their proper placement: fork on the left, knife and spoon to the right, plate in the middle, napkin to the left of the fork, glass above the knife.

  I mean, who gave a shit about place settings, really? Well, I guess some people did and that was their privilege.

  But Mom’s diligence in performing a trifling chore wasn’t the only thing that intrigued me as I observed her in action. Another was knowing with absolute certainty that one of those plates she’d set down, namely hers, would soon be filled to capacity. Judging by the amount of food my mom consumed you’d think she weighed a ton. But just the opposite was true. Though she ate like a horse she looked like a jockey. I mean, I was skinny, for sure. But in my case you could at least see why: I ate like Gandhi on one of his fasts.

  My dad cited Mom’s metabolism as the reason she could pack it away and still weigh under a hundred pounds. Her metabolic rate, he claimed, was exceptionally high. If that was true, his must have been exceptionally low, or normal, or whatever, because while his appetite easily matched hers, his weight was far more proportionate to his consumption. All that said, I was skeptical of Dad’s theory. Yes, he knew a lot about real estate, which he sold for a living, but he knew very little about anything else, including, I suspected, the mysterious workings of the human body, and why some people gained weight and others didn’t while eating the same amount of food.

  My dad didn’t know much about cooking either, but he did have one specialty, fried matzos, which he made every Sunday morning and whose ingredients, including about forty pounds of butter, he was now pouring from a large glass bowl into the frying pan on the stove.

  Meanwhile my mom, finished setting the table, set down a pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice and settled into her reserved seat to my right.

  “So how was your date?” she asked, as I knew, and feared, she would.

  “Okay.”

  “What I meant was, did you have a good time?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You took a nice girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you went to the movie theater?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, how were they, the movies?”

  “Okay.”

  Dad looked up from stirring his culinary delight. “Is this one of your monosyllabic days? I only ask so we’ll know what to expect from you today.”

  I fiddled with my napkin while answering his question with silence.

  “I see,” Dad replied.

  “Al, enough already.”

  “It�
��s not nearly enough. Talking to him is like talking to a mutant.”

  “A mute,” I corrected.

  “Ah, he speaks, if only to repair my English.”

  Dad turned off the stove, carried the frying pan to the table and ladled the matzos onto our plates, heaping enough on Mom’s to feed the state of Israel.

  She speared a forkful. “Well, he won’t say much if you keep badgering him.”

  “Who’s badgering? I’m just commenting.”

  Dad set the frying pan back on the stove, returned to the table and sat across from me. His blue terrycloth robe strained to cover his protruding belly, while his hair struggled to lie flat. In contrast, Mom’s pink robe hung loosely on her meager frame and her bouffant sat regally atop her head, brushed, combed and precisely shaped even on a Sunday morning.

  My mom kept the house like her hair, in a state of perfection. With a little help from the cleaning lady, she’d divested it of dirt, dust and cobwebs, while guarding the furniture against intruders such as coffee cups and newspapers. As for the rest, like rugs, knick-knacks, appliances and the like, they too were neat, tidy and of course spotless.

  Perhaps not coincidentally, our house mirrored the neighborhood, in which the homes were carefully aligned, the hedges clipped, the bushes trimmed and the lawns mowed to within an inch of their lives. Nothing marred the landscape except sterility.

  My mom stopped shoveling food in her mouth, at least temporarily. “So tell us, who was the girl? You ran out of the house so fast we couldn’t ask.”

  “And if we had inquired?” Dad said. “He’d have grunted, or given us a non-answer.”

  Mom gave him a menacing glare.

  “What? What’d I say?”

  Instead of answering, she returned to me. “Nu? Do we know the girl?”

  “No.”

  “Is she Jewish?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “At school.”

  “See what I mean?” Dad said. “He’s a fount of information, our son.”

  “Al Rubin, if you don’t stop it I’ll cut out your tongue.”

  Mom delivered this threat in a calm, steady voice, which impressed me because I sounded like Henry Aldrich when I threatened someone, which fortunately was seldom.

  While I admired my mom’s placid demeanor, I had difficulty coping with her, as well as with my dad (as you my have guessed by now). I suppose they meant well, but they were so old-fashioned, so out of touch, so—I guess you could say—so-so. For instance, neither of them appreciated rock and roll. My mom merely ignored it, but Dad threw hissy fits whenever I threw on my forty-fives. I kept the volume fairly low but his ears perked up as soon as he heard something by Elvis or Chuck Berry or Little Richard playing on the phonograph in my room. Automatically, it seemed, he’d come charging in to deliver his favorite tirade.

  “Filth, garbage. It’s a shame what passes for music these days. In my day we listened to songs you could dance to and enjoy. Now it’s strictly noise and vulgarity. Even girls like all that screeching and wailing and lewdness. You watch, someday they’ll be … you know … doing things they shouldn’t do, and they’ll be doing them all over the place. And that rock-and-roll will be the cause of it. Mark my words.”

  I rarely marked anything my dad said, especially his dubious predictions. I could only dream of girls doing things they shouldn’t do, and doing them all over the place.

  “Well, at least tell us how work is,” Mom said.

  “You mean at the drugstore?”

  “No,” Dad interjected, “at the Vernor’s factory where you don’t work.”

  Mom and I both ignored him.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  Her brow furrowed. “Just okay?”

  “Yes, just okay.”

  Dusting, sweeping and stocking shelves weren’t the most exciting tasks imaginable, but the job did provide some much-needed cash.

  Anyway, by now I was tired of this interrogation so I asked to be excused.

  “You haven’t eaten anything,” Mom observed.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Let him go,” Dad said. “I’m tired of all his yakking. He never stops, our son. Yak-yak-yak, yak-yak-yak, yak-yak-yak. It’s a wonder he’s not hoarse from all that yakking.”

  A regular Jack Benny, my dad.

  I took his directive to Mom as permission to leave the table, and in the seclusion of my room I called Diane Goldfarb.

  Chapter 5

  We sat in a booth at Domenico’s, one among a slew of pizza parlors that had mushroomed throughout the city over the past few years. Located on McNichols Road in northwest Detroit, this particular emporium drew mainly people my age, which appealed to me almost as much as the pizza.

  Speaking of which, a medium cheese and sausage lay between us on a large metal platter, while two glasses of Coke idled nearby. Diane grabbed a slice and took a substantial bite, using her tongue to reel in the ropy cheese. If she meant to titillate me, she’d succeeded.

  She washed the pizza down with a sip of Coke. “So what’re you gonna do?”

  “About what?”

  I grabbed a slice while she worked on an answer.

  “Job, career, your future. You know.”

  “Oh.”

  “What’d you think I meant?”

  I shrugged.

  Actually I’d suspected what she meant but hoped I was wrong. I hoped she meant, so what’re you gonna do, ravish me please?

  My hopes dashed, I informed Diane I planned to be a writer.

  “A writer?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She looked puzzled. “I’ve never met anyone who wanted to be a writer. What kind? Of writer, I mean.”

  “I’m not sure. I want to write is all I know.”

  Which was an outright lie. But saying I intended to write fiction might sound a little goofy, meaning impractical, especially to a Jewish girl.

  Diane drummed her blood-red fingernails on the table. “You don’t want to be a doctor or lawyer or something?”

  “No. I want to write.”

  “Does it pay well, writing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  And didn’t care, though I knew Jewish girls did, which is why they routinely grilled their dates about their prospects. But knowing this in advance didn’t make Diane’s probing any more palatable.

  She took another, less sensual, bite and sipped her Coke. “You’re different, you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t know that.

  Another fib, since I saw no reason to tell her I felt different, meaning alienated, from everyone around me, like I’d wandered into a nudist colony fully clothed.

  Sweating under the spotlight, I turned it on Diane. “What about you? What do you want to do with your life?”

  “Probably teach, until I get married and have kids.”

  Such mundane plans were predictable coming from a girl, but I’d never learned how to react to them. So I kept her going with a string of insipid questions, in return for which I learned Marlon Brando was her favorite actor, Elvis Presley her favorite singer and Harold Robbins her favorite author. With these last two favorites, I spotted an advantage.

  “I like Elvis too,” I informed her.

  “You do?”

  “Uh-huh. And Harold Robbins.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  I asked a few more frivolous questions, then, eager to capitalize on our shared values, I suggested we leave. Diane agreed, more heartily than I expected, so I got us out of there.

  Fast.

  #

  I was still forming a plan of attack when I pulled into the alley behind Diane’s apartment building and parked in front of several snow-covered garbage cans. I’d no sooner turned off the ignition than she scooted over and kissed me, and I don’t mean on the cheek. So much for the best almost-laid plans. Adapting quickly, I returned the kis
s, then, after a respectful moment or two, unbuttoned her coat and cupped a breast through her snug wool sweater. Hearing no objections, I squeezed.

  She groaned.

  This emboldened me to raise the garment, slip a hand under her bra and, for the first time in my life, touch a naked boob. Fondling it in the flesh beat all my imaginings, as did her response. She moaned, leaned into my hand and ground her lips against mine so hard our teeth scraped. Heart pounding, I slid my hand under her skirt and ran it along her leg, eventually arriving at the smooth, silky thigh above her stocking.

  She groaned again.

  Anticipating nirvana, I nudged Diane toward the passenger door, which she conveniently fell back against. Nearly delirious by now, I raised her skirt, grabbed her panties and tugged.

  “Don’t,” she whispered.

  I stared into two glazed eyes. “What?”

  “Don’t,” she repeated, louder and more insistent.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Diane quickly rearranged herself and sat up. “What part of ‘Don’t’ don’t you understand?”

  Her harsh tone rattled my nerves. “But I thought, I mean you seemed—”

  “What?”

  “Um, willing.”

  “Look, I’ve got urges too, you know.

  A bold admission from a girl, especially a Jewish maidel. Maybe I still had a chance.

  “Then why—”

  “Because I can’t.”

  Well, she could, but obviously she didn’t want to, probably for the usual reasons.

  “I’ve never gone this far before,” Diane said. “But I’m fond of you and—”

  “I’m fond of you too,” I rushed to assure her.

  “But can’t you see, that’s not enough.” She buttoned her coat. “Maybe for you boys it is. Wham-bam and you’re on your way. But it’s different for us girls. We’ve got our reputations to think of and parents to deal with. And what if I got preggers?” She slumped back against the seat. “I’ll bet you don’t even have a condom.”

  I replied by saying nothing.

  “That’s what I figured.”

  We were both quiet.

  After a moment her tone turned gentler. “I do like you, Nate, and I’m sorry you thought we could go all the way. It’s my fault.”