We came back to the city Labor Day Monday—us and a couple million
others—traffic crawling, a hot day, the windows practically closed up
tight to keep Cat in. I sweated, and then cat hairs stuck to me and got up
my nose. Considering everything, Pop acted quite mild.
I met a kid up at the lake in Connecticut who had skin-diving equipment.
He let me use it one day when Mom and Pop were off sight-seeing. Boy, this
has fishing beat hollow! I found out there’s a skin-diving course at the
Y, and I’m going to begin saving up for the fins and mask and stuff. Pop
won’t mind forking out for the Y membership, because he’ll figure it’s
character-building.
Meanwhile, I’m wondering if I can get back up to Connecticut again one
weekend while the weather’s still warm, and I see that Rosh Hashanah falls
on a Monday and Tuesday this year, the week after school opens. Great. So
I ask this kid—Kenny Wright—if I can maybe come visit him that weekend so
I can do some more skin diving.
“Rosh Hashanah? What’s that?” he says.
So I explain to him. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year. About half the
kids in my school are Jewish, so they all stay out for it, and I always do
too. Last year the school board gave up and made it an official school
holiday for everyone, Jewish or not. Same with Yom Kippur, the week after.
Kenny whistles. “You sure are lucky. I don’t think we got any holidays
coming till Thanksgiving.”
I always thought the kids in the country were lucky having outdoor yards
for sports and recess, but I guess we have it over them on
holidays—’specially in the fall: three Jewish holidays in September,
Columbus Day in October, Election Day and Veterans’ Day in November, and
then Thanksgiving. It drives the mothers wild.
I don’t figure it’d be worth train fare to Connecticut for just two days,
so I say good-bye to Kenny and see you next year and stuff.
Back home I’m pretty busy right away, on account of starting in a new
school, Charles Evans Hughes High. It’s different from the junior high,
where I knew half the kids, and also my whole homeroom there went from one
classroom to another together. At Hughes everyone has to get his own
schedule and find the right classroom in this immense building, which is
about the size of Penn Station. There are about a million kids in
it—actually about two thousand—most of whom I never saw before. Hardly any
of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village kids come here because it
isn’t their district. However, walking back across Fifth Avenue one day, I
see one kid I know from Peter Cooper. His name is Ben Alstein. I ask him
how come he is at Hughes.
“My dad wanted me to get into Peter Stuyvesant High School—you know, the
genius factory, city-wide competitive exam to get in. Of course I didn’t
make it. Biggest Failure of the Year, that’s me.”
“Heck, I never even tried for that. But how come you’re here?”
“There’s a special science course you can qualify for by taking a math
test. Then you don’t have to live in the district. My dad figures as long
as I’m in something special, there’s hope. I’m not really very interested
in science, but that doesn’t bother him.”
So after that Ben and I walk back and forth to school together, and it
turns out we have three classes together, too—biology and algebra and
English. We’re both relieved to have at least one familiar face to look
for in the crowd. My old friend Nick, aside from not really being my best
friend anymore, has gone to a Catholic high school somewhere uptown.
On the way home from school one Friday in September, I ask Ben what he’s
doing Monday and Tuesday, the Jewish holidays.
“Tuesday I got to get into my bar mitzvah suit and go to synagogue and
over to Brooklyn to my grandmother’s. Monday I don’t have to do anything
special. Come on over with your roller skates and we’ll get in the hockey
game.”
“I skate on my tail,” I say, because it’s true, and it would be doubly
true in a hockey game. I try quick to think up something else. We’re
walking down the block to my house, and there’s Cat sitting out front, so
I say, “Let’s cruise around and get down to Fulton Fish Market and pick up
some fish heads for my cat.”
“You’re a real nut, aren’t you?” Ben says. He doesn’t say it as if he
minds—just mentioning the fact. He’s an easygoing kind of guy, and I think
most of the time he likes to let someone else make the plans. So he shrugs
and says, “O.K.”
I introduce him to Cat. Ben looks him in the eye, and Cat looks away and
licks his back. Ben says, “So I got to get you fresh fish for Rosh
Hashanah, huh?”
Cat jumps down and rubs from back to front against Ben’s right leg and
from front to back against his left leg and goes to lie down in the middle
of the sidewalk.
“See? He likes you,” I say. “He won’t have anything to do with most guys,
except Tom.”
“Who’s Tom?”
So I tell Ben all about Tom and the cellar and his father disappearing on
him.
“Gee,” says Ben, “I thought I had trouble, with my father practically
telling me how to breathe better every minute, but at least he doesn’t
disappear. What does Tom do now?”
“Works at the flower shop, right down there at the corner.”
Ben feels around in his pockets a minute. “Hey, I got two bucks I was
supposed to spend on a textbook. Come on and I’ll buy Mom a plant for the
holidays, and you can introduce me to Tom.”
We go down to the flower shop, and at first Tom frowns because he thinks
we’ve just come to kid around. Ben tells him he wants a plant, so then he
makes a big thing out of showing him all the plants, from the ten-dollar
ones on down, so Mr. Palumbo will see he’s doing a good job. Ben finally
settles on a funny-looking cactus that Tom says is going to bloom pretty
soon.
Ben goes along home and I arrange to pick him up on Monday. I wait around
outside until I see Tom go out on a delivery and ask him how he likes the
job. He says he doesn’t really know yet, but at least the guy is decent to
work for, not like the filling-station man.
* * * * *
I sleep late Monday and go over to Peter Cooper about eleven. A lot of
kids are out in the playgrounds, and some fathers are there tossing
footballs with them and shouting “Happy New Year” to each other. It sounds
odd to hear people saying that on a warm day in September.
Ben and I wander out of the project and he says, “How do we get to this
Fulton Street?”
I see a bus that says “Avenue C” on it stopping on Twenty-third Street.
Avenue C is way east, and so is Fulton Street, so I figure it’ll probably
work out. We get on. The bus rockets along under the East Side Drive for a
few blocks and then heads down Avenue C, which is narrow and crowded. It’s
a Spanish and Puerto Rican neighborhood to begin with, then farther
downtown it’s mostly Jewish. Lots of people are out on the street shaking
hands and clapping each other on the back, and the stores are all closed.
Every time the bus stops, the driver shouts to some of the people on the
sidewalk, and he seems to know a good many of the passengers who get on.
He asks them about their jobs, or their babies, or their aunt who’s sick
in Bellevue. This is pretty unusual in New York, where bus drivers usually
act like they hate people in general and their passengers in particular.
Suddenly the bus turns off Avenue C and heads west.
Ben looks out the window and says, “Hey, this is Houston Street. I been
down here to a big delicatessen. But we’re not heading downtown anymore.”
“Probably it’ll turn again,” I say.
It doesn’t, though, not till clear over at Sixth Avenue. By then everyone
else has got off and the bus driver turns around and says, “Where you two
headed for?”
It’s funny, a bus driver asking you that, so I ask him, “Where does this
bus go?”
“It goes from Bellevue Hospital down to Hudson Street, down by the Holland
Tunnel.”
“Holy crow!” says Ben. “We’re liable to wind up in New Jersey.”
“Relax. I don’t go that far. I just go back up to Bellevue,” says the
driver.
“You think we’d be far from Fulton Fish Market?” I say.
The driver gestures vaguely. “Just across the island.”
So Ben and I decide we’ll get off at the end of the line and walk from
there. The bus driver says, “Have a nice hike.”
“I think there’s something fishy about this,” says Ben.
“That’s what we’re going to get, fish,” I say, and we walk. We walk quite
a ways.
Ben sees a little Italian restaurant down a couple of steps, and we stop
to look at the menu in the window. The special for the day is lasagna, and
Ben says, “Boy, that’s for me!”
We go inside, while I finger the dollar in my pocket and do some fast
mental arithmetic. Lasagna is a dollar, so that’s out, but I see spaghetti
and meat balls is seventy-five cents, so that will still leave me bus fare
home.
A waiter rushes up, wearing a white napkin over his arm like a banner, and
takes our order. He returns in a moment with a shiny clean white linen
tablecloth and a basket of fresh Italian bread and rolls. On a third trip
he brings enough chilled butter for a family and asks if we want coffee
with lunch or later. Later, we say.
“Man, this is living!” says Ben as he moves in on the bread.
“He treats us just like people.”
Pretty soon the waiter is back with our lasagna and spaghetti, and he
swirls around the table as if he were dancing. “Anything else now? Mind
the hot plates, very hot! Have a good lunch now. I bring the coffee
later.”
He swirls away, the napkin over his arm making a little breeze, and
circles another table. It’s a small room, and there are only four tables
eating, but he seems to enjoy acting like he was serving royalty at the
Waldorf. When we’re just finished eating, he comes back with a pot of
steaming coffee and a pitcher of real cream.
I’m dolloping the cream in, and it floats, when a thought hits me: We got
to leave a tip for this waiter.