EVERYTHING
FOR YOUR FAMILY
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Once upon a time, in 1956 to be precise, my family lived in a small apartment on 172nd Street in the Bronx. There was my mother, my father, my little brother Sammy, who was 5, and me. I was 9. Every night my father played the bass violin for us. He could pluck it like a jazzman or play old, slow songs with the bow. Dad was tall and slim, with broad shoulders and endless arms and fingers like gull feathers and a sad, sweet smile. He looked just right standing next to that 6-foot-tall fiddle, like he belonged with it and it belonged with him. On weekends Dad played in the clubs in Greenwich Village. We didn’t have a car, so he always shared a cab to the Village and rode there with the bass violin on his lap and its neck sticking out the window. On those nights, he seemed happiest of all. My father taught Sammy and me to love music, too. I didn’t play so well, to tell you the truth, but Sammy sure did. All you had to do was hum a song to him and he’d play it back for you on our old brown piano. Sometimes he and Dad played together. Most of all, though, my brother wanted to play the accordion. Every chance he got, he made me walk him down the block to old man Schulberg’s store, where there was a beautiful third-hand accordion on the very back shelf, and Schulberg always let Sammy play it. Sammy played so beautifully that old Schulberg would stop work and he would listen and Mrs. Schulberg would listen and the Schulbergs’ granddaughter Rebecca, who was 10 and pretty and thought she knew everything, would listen too, and sometimes even sing. One day near the end of October, Sammy asked my mother and father if he could have the accordion for Hanukkah, but they told him that we couldn’t possibly afford it. My little brother understood. He knew that we were not rich people. He knew that my father went outside every morning with an old brown briefcase and sold insurance door-to-door. Sammy didn’t ask for the accordion anymore. The first Saturday in November, a terrible thing happened. A big black Cadillac drove too close to my father’s cab and hit the neck of the violin and broke it to pieces. My father brought the broken violin home and put it in a corner in the kitchen. We all knew that he didn’t have the money to buy a new one. My father couldn’t play in the clubs in Greenwich Village anymore. Instead he started taking long walks outside our apartment in the middle of the night. Sometimes I’d wake up and see Sammy sitting by the window watching him. ••• My father, Aaron Grossman, grew up in Vienna, Austria, and he had played the violin since he was 6 years old. He started with a small violin and as he grew he worked his way up to a great big bass that was taller than him. In 1938, the year before the war started, he had just turned 20 and was one of the best young musicians in the city. One day the soldiers came into his house and took him and his brother and his parents away. He never saw the bass violin again. He never saw his brother again. He never saw his parents again. He came to America to the Bronx in 1946. An old friend of his father’s, a merchant by the name of Benjamin Schulberg, lived on 166th Street and operated a store full of old stuff, especially musical stuff dented trumpets, punctured drums, stringless violins, guitars with broken tuner keys, rusted saxophones and accordions with torn bellows, all sorts of wonderful stuff. Sometimes he fixed these things. Sometimes he did not. Benjamin Schulberg gave my father a job. Dad worked for old man Schulberg until he had enough money to rent a nice apartment for his new wife my mother and new baby me. With the money he had left, he bought himself a bass violin. He began to play for the first time since before the war. He decided he would play all his life, and make a living playing. But it turned out he couldn’t support us that way, and he got a job with the insurance company, and worked very hard, and from then on he played the bass violin only as a hobby. My brother, better than any of us, I think, understood what music meant to my father. When the big bass broke, Sammy missed Dad’s music, but even more than that, he missed the way the music made Dad happy. Dad tried to hide the way he felt, but he didn’t hide it very well. He didn’t sing around the house as much as he used to, and almost never whistled anymore. He tried to seem cheerful by talking about the Yankees, who played just down the road and had won the World Series that year, but we knew he was just doing it for us. Dad really didn’t know all that much about baseball. On the first night of Hanukkah, we lit the candles and said the prayers and ate the pot roast Mom had made. It was a Friday, and down in the Village Dad’s old band was playing along to a beat kept by a brand-new bass player. Dad didn’t say much after dinner, just kissed us both on the head and sat down to watch Jack Benny on TV. After bedtime, Sammy came to me and pulled on my arm. “Jacob,” he said, “we’ve got to get Dad a new violin.” ••• The next morning, for reasons neither Sammy nor I could understand, our father woke up happy. He whistled over breakfast, whistled while he shaved, whistled while he pulled on his warm wool shirt. It had snowed during the night, and the street outside glistened white. Dad threw open the window and we could hear the plow trucks way down on 161st. My mother started clearing the breakfast plates before Sammy and I were done eating “Get yourselves ready,” she said. “What for?” “We’re going to the Schulbergs’.” “Why?” “Ask your father,” she said. “Sometimes he wakes up with ideas in his head.” When we were ready to go, we all piled into a cab, Sammy and me and Mom and Dad and the broken bass violin. The Schulbergs lived just a few blocks away, and ordinarily we would have walked there. That old violin was the only reason we were riding, so I knew something important was going on. I was certain that old man Schulberg had agreed to some sort of uneven trade, a broken bass violin and maybe a little bit of money in exchange for a bass that was all in one piece and ready to play. Already I could picture my father happily heading down the stairs and out into the chill air the next Friday night, lugging that big violin and stuffing it into a taxicab bound for the Village. I think Sammy must have been picturing the same thing, because he was grinning the whole short ride to Schulberg’s. It was a strange day, full of unexpected kindnesses, like a birthday party thrown for you on a day that isn’t your birthday. We stopped in front of the Schulbergs’ building and Rebecca was there waiting for us. Sammy climbed out of the car and ran right at her; if a 5-year-old could have crushes, I’d say he had one on her. He liked the way she always had some sort of adventure in store for us, the sort of thing that could almost get you in trouble, but not quite. Mr. and Mrs. Schulberg came out of the building and the old man gestured for my father to bring in the broken bass violin. A few minutes later the two men came out empty-handed and wearing blank expressions that looked rehearsed, and I knew they had some sort of surprise in store. “What’s the news?” I asked Dad. “You’ll find out tonight,” he said. And then we crammed ourselves into Schulberg’s big black Oldsmobile and headed for Central Park to play in the snow. Rebecca led Sammy and me off into a distant grove and then to one even more distant and then to another, so far away that we were almost lost, but not quite, and she told us the scariest ghost stories she could think of, which really weren’t that scary, and, all the while, all I could think about was my father getting a new bass violin. “Are you listening to me, Jacob Grossman?” asked Rebecca. “Not really,” I said. ••• It was nearly sundown when we got back to Schulberg’s place. Mrs. Schulberg fed us her famous all-chicken dinner chicken salad, chicken soup, roast chicken, nothing spared but the feathers and we lit the second-night candles and said the prayers and sang “Rock of Ages” together. The candles flickered and dripped blue wax on Mrs. Schulberg’s doily. I kept waiting for Schulberg and my father to tell us they had a surprise, and for my father to step into Schulberg’s little study and come out with his new bass violin. “I have a surprise,” said my father. I smiled at Sammy. Sammy smiled back. And my father went into Schulberg’s little study and came out with… …An accordion! “Happy Hanukkah!” said my father. “Thank you,” said Sammy, and took his new accordion, surprised and happy and sad all at the same time. That night Sammy played and Rebecca sang and I listened until well after all of our bedtimes. Sammy played beautifully and Rebecca kept teasing me with winks and little starlet shimmies, and all the grownups watched and laughed, but every time I looked over at my father I kept wondering how he really felt. That broken-necked bass violin, all gorgeous wood and perfect craftsmanship, was the best bargaining chip Dad had, and now he’d gone and swapped it for an accordion. When the music stopped I put my hand on Sammy’s shoulder and whispered in his ear, “We have to give it back, you know.” “I know,” Sammy said. ••• Sammy and I and because she was fearless and because she always got what she wanted from her grandfather Rebecca, invited Schulberg to his office and began a negotiation. “Mr. Schulberg,” I said, “we’d like to trade this accordion for a bass violin.” Schulberg took a deep breath and folded his hands in front of his mouth as if he were either praying or actually considering our proposal, and he exhaled and spoke “You see, my friends,” I loved that Schulberg always spoke to us as if we were grownups “that would contradict your father’s wishes.” “Dad thinks the accordion will make us happy, but what will make us happy is for him to be happy, and for him to be happy he needs ” “Your father is a man, a real one, an honest one, the best kind, one who thinks first of his family and maybe fourth or fifth of himself and even then feels badly for thinking of himself at all and well, as I was saying, your father is a man, and he can make his own decisions, and this is the decision he has made.” “But ” “This discussion,” said Schulberg, “has come to an end.” ••• Ah, but we’d gotten Rebecca involved in this, and Rebecca always had a scheme. Sammy and I met her the next morning at half past nine, halfway between Schulberg’s building and ours. She’d told Sammy to bring his accordion and me to bring my Yankees cap and a dollar. A dollar! All I had was a dollar, and I’d gotten it the night before, my little gift on the night Sammy had gotten a priceless instrument. “Put the cap on the sidewalk,” said Rebecca, “and the dollar in the cap. That way people will know they’re supposed to put money there.” “What ” “My grandfather is a kind man, but he doesn’t believe in giving things away for free. Bad for giver and getter alike. You want to get your father a fiddle?” “Yes.” “Then you’re gonna have to earn it.” So Sammy played and Rebecca sang and I stood there feeling like an idiot and at a quarter-to-three in the afternoon there was still only one paper dollar my dollar in the baseball cap. My dollar and a piece of crumpled sportspage and a couple handfuls of small change that amounted to two dollars and five cents. “Well,” I said, “this was a great idea.” “It’s a brilliant idea,” said Rebecca. “And now that people know we’re here, they’ll bring extra money tomorrow.” But by the end of the next day we still had less than four dollars. Not bad, in a way, but not nearly good enough. ••• The bass violin we wanted to get Dad for Hanukkah was the cheapest one Schulberg had. It was old and scratched, its finish worn off altogether at certain spots, but it was beautiful to us because it was still in one piece and could still make music. It cost $40. How we would manage to get $40 when the most I’d ever had in my hand was $3.50 was beyond me, but Rebecca spoke with confidence, and when Rebecca spoke with confidence, you sort of just shrugged and followed where she led. On the morning of the fifth day of Hanukkah, Rebecca took us down to Fordham Street, just off Grand Concourse, not too far from home but somehow a world away, a place of shops with big decorated windows and cafes with noshing, hat-wearing grownups and movie theatres with misspellings on the marquis. We parked ourselves in front of Alexander’s Department Store, home of new school clothes and heavy coats and ladies’ underthings, a place the little girls of my school loved to go with their moms and the boys dreaded, although and I still blush all these years later to say it I always sort of liked the place. We stayed in front of Alexander’s from a minute or two past 10 until well after 4 and Sammy played and Rebecca sang and I stood next to my baseball cap with a stupid grin, occasionally saying things like, “Happy Hanukkah, Mrs. Epstein” and “How ya doin’, Ben,” because it was, after all, winter break and every single human being I knew was out on the street, marching into Alexander’s, and looking at me like I was nuts. “Well,” I said, “it’s for a good cause.” And I thanked each and every one of them when they gave us a nickel or a dime. At the end of the day Rebecca and Sammy and I sat around the Schulberg’s kitchen table and we counted the money and I looked at Rebecca and my brother and I said, in the manliest way I could, “Not even close, kids.” We’d made six dollars and 37 cents, bringing our three-day total to 10 dollars and change. “Well,” said Rebecca, “we’ll just have to try again.” The next day we went back to Alexander’s and played again, and at the end of the day we were still $22.31 short. The $17.69 we had was a fortune to me not quite a bicycle’s worth, but good for enough baseballs to last me till high school. What it couldn’t buy us was a bass violin. “We’ve got to try something audacious,” said Rebecca. “ ‘Audacious?’” I said. “What are you, a Quiz Kid?” “Recklessly creative! Unprecedented!” I rolled my eyes at her. “She’s right,” said my little brother. “You don’t even know what she’s talking about,” I told him. “Listen, Rebecca, why don’t we just take your grandpa what we’ve got and ask for the violin.” Rebecca shook her head, shook it hard. I was concerned that it would come clean off. “Why not?” I asked. “We’re not trying to get something for nothing anymore. We’re trying to get something for 17 dollars and 69 cents.” “My grandfather,” Rebecca said, “is a businessman.” “But he’s a nice businessman.” Rebecca winced with distaste. “Jacob Grossman,” she said, “I’ll say it once more and once more only a man earns what he gets. So my question is this: Are you a man or a boy?” It was the best pitch she had, that comment, a sinking fastball on the inside corner, the sort of pitch that leaves you just standing there watching the umpire call you out. I don’t know if Schulberg would really have given us the bass for $17.69. What I do know is that his granddaughter had no intention of letting us ask. She’d made our quest into her quest, another adventure, another proving ground. If we were going to get my father the bass violin, we were going to have to go to the ends of the earth to earn it. And, the next day, we very nearly did. ••• It was one of those winter mornings when you look outside and can’t bear the thought of being inside another minute the sky blue as a storybook sea, the sun slanting in, hitting the window hard, throwing a golden square on the bedroom floor, and, in the square, the sharp-edged shadow of you. These are the mornings when you throw open the window never mind the frost, the unmistakable sensation of your nose turning pink with chill, the sound of your mother telling you you’ll catch your death of cold standing there in your cotton pajamas, never mind all that you breathe in deep and the air tastes like mint and the day ahead feels limitless and, even though you’re old enough to know that every day has its limits and that such days in particular can’t help but disappoint, even though you’re no fool, the most level-headed of all the level-headed kids in the Bronx, you let yourself expect, if only for a moment, that something wonderful will happen today. We met Rebecca out front and she led us to the D-train and we wound up on Bleecker Street, in Greenwich Village. It was not a place, not in 1956 or any other year that I’m aware of, where three unsupervised children with an accordion should wind up. Rebecca stopped us in front of a tavern with a worn green door and a rainspotted window and said, “This looks about right.” “What,” I asked, “looks right about it?” “You don’t understand a thing, do you? They gather in places like this.” And, of course, she was right. Once more Rebecca and Sammy played and sang and laughed and danced and spun “La Vie en Rose,” they played, and “O Solo Mio” and “Silent Night” and “Rock Around the Clock” and men in berets and women with long straight hair stopped and smiled and clapped, and the dollars dollars! fell into my Yankees cap like autumn leaves. I began to sing along whenever I knew a word or two. The day grew old and the sky grew gray and we grew rich. I felt as though I might like to give Rebecca a hug. And then it rained. It rained and rained, poured, really, raindrops like wet fists falling on our heads, lightning flickering over rooftops, Sammy’s fingers slipping on wet accordion keys. “You’re going to ruin that thing,” I said. But Sammy kept playing and Rebecca kept singing, right to the end of “As Time Goes By,” and at last they stopped and we barreled through the green door into the tavern and the man at the bar looked at us and shook his head. “No kids allowed,” he said, and he pointed us back to the street. Down the block we went, huddling close to the walls, seeking shelter beneath drippy doorways. Barkeeps kept shooing us away, the street emptied out, Rebecca steered us down an alley “It’s a shortcut,” she said, grinning and glimmer-eyed, and I could almost make out the little imp whispering in her left ear and then, two right turns later, she stopped in her tracks and announced what I already knew “Boys,” she said, “we’re lost.” ••• The man who gestured three rainsoaked children to follow him through a doorway was not, by the looks of him, the sort of man three rainsoaked children should ever follow through a doorway. He was blotched and soiled from head to toe, red-nosed and dirty-bearded and nearly toothless. He had tucked old newspaper broadsheets into his greasy sky-blue shirt to keep himself dry, but the papers had already turned to pulp. His seersucker suit was three sizes too big and torn at the cuffs from being walked upon. Tucked under his arm was a battered brown portfolio not unlike my father’s briefcase, come to think of it and he held it as if it were filled with diamonds or pearls or secrets of state. He pointed us to an alcove under a stairway and a door in the alcove and we all even Rebecca hesitated at the door until he said in a sad, cackling little voice, “Aw, don’t let an old man scare ye,” and Rebecca straightened her back and marched in and I making the questionable judgment that if worse came to worse the three of us could overpower the old coot took my brother’s hand and went in, too. The room was lit by a single bulb and a dim sliver of basement window; the floor, the walls, the ceiling all bare cement; not a stick of furniture in the place. It clearly wasn’t an apartment maybe a storeroom, or a shelter, or an architect’s mistake. A cockroach skittered over my shoe. In every corner of the room, stacked from floor to ceiling, were marble-patterned composition books, like the ones we used at school. “Nice place,” I said. “It keeps my book dry,” said the old man. “You mean your books.” “No,” he said, with a shrug. “It’s all one book.” ••• The old man told us his name was Joe, and he’d been working on his book for either 38 or 42 years, depending on whether you included certain years when he hadn’t gotten much done. He called it “The People’s History of the World or, The Things They Said While I Was Listening,” and he told us that someday all the students of the world “maybe even kids just like you” would read his book. We asked him if he’d read some to us and he said he wouldn’t read to anyone until the whole masterpiece was done. “Folks wind up studying a man like me,” he said. “In the long run they always remember the Van Goghs and the Mozarts and the little old Joes.” Then he broke into a horrible, hacking cough. He opened the door, spit under the stairway, closed the door, asked us to pardon his manners, embraced himself and shivered and coughed again. “Don’t you have anyone to take care of you?” Sammy asked. “No one to take care of me, no one for me to take care of.” Joe leaned toward my brother with a clever, empty-mouthed smile. “You see,” he said, “I’m dedicated to a dream.” Joe turned away from Sammy and sneezed. “Bless you,” I said. When he said thank you, he looked me straight in the eye and I could have sworn he was crying. I thought maybe we should leave, but the weather was in no mood to let us. The rain, or maybe it was hail by then, kept smacking the tenement in staccato bursts; it sounded like someone was throwing handfuls of change at the door. Thunder rolled down the alley and thrummed meaty-pawed on the window. Our little bunker was bitter cold but it was the coziest place available, and I was happy to have it. It also struck me that for old Joe, dressed in layers of newspaper and threadbare summer-suit, winter didn’t get much better than this. It had been just past 3 when the rain began; at 6 we were still in the cold gray room with ratty old Joe. He’d told us how, just after college (College! I thought. With enough determination a fellow can really do himself in!), he and a banjo-toting buddy had box-car hopped across the country, rolling from odd job to odd job to no job, passing through steel mills and meat packing plants and decrepit old plantations and scrubby rangelands and mined-out glory holes and hospital wards and Indian reservations and, out West, miles and miles of orange groves, and, beyond them, the “far sea.” Sammy liked Joe right away, and Joe liked Sammy, too. Sammy told Joe that our father was a musician and Joe said, “So he knows what it’s like to live for a dream,” and Sammy said, “He sure does.” I looked at Sammy, then at Joe, and I thought to myself that it wasn’t true, what Sammy was saying. Dad didn’t live for a dream at all, but for us. I also thought that, at that very moment, he and Mom must be worried sick. “We have to go,” I said. “It’s still pouring,” said Rebecca. “We. Have. To. Go.” “Your brother will catch a cold.” “My mother will have a heart attack.” And I gathered up my brother and his accordion and my hatful of money and we said thank you and I smiled at old Joe and old Joe smiled back and I thought I saw that cry-look in his eyes again, so I said “Why don’t you come over for dinner?” “Don’t mind if I do,” he said. ••• It turned out a good idea, sort of, to bring Joe along, since the fact was that we were lost and had no idea how to make it back to the D-train. Joe led us down an alley, across a side street and down another alley. The sky had gone black and the rain had turned to snow and the Village was waking up for the night, girls in high boots and men in leather coats, an old man with a parrot on his shoulder, a skinny young guy with a guitar. Music escaped into the street every time a club door opened. “Let’s listen,” said Sammy. “I’m hungry,” said Joe. “We’re having dinner at the apartment,” I said. “But I’m hungry now,” Joe said. “And there’s music,” said Sammy. We wound up, by a vote of three-to-one, in a dingy-little coffee shop, serenaded by a single off-key trumpet player. Joe stared at my hat until I gave him some money and he ordered a coffee and a steak and, when he was done, a slice of cheesecake, and when he was done with that, a tunafish sandwich and a bowl of asparagus soup, topped off with another slice of cheesecake and he kept giving me The Look and I kept reaching into my hat until at last he stood and arched his back and gripped his belly with two callused gray hands and hopped a time or two (“to see if there’s any room left,” he said) and nodded and declared, “Well, that outta do it,” and he led us to the D-train, and we bought him a ticket. ••• It was nearly 9 o’clock when my father opened the door and gave me a bear hug, followed by the sternest look he could muster. Behind him stood my mother, red-eyed and tear-streaked and pale, and, behind her, the Schulbergs, looking a little less jolly than usual. Mom asked us, of course, where had we been, and Rebecca, of course, said something stupid “Performing!” and we were, of course, told we were never to leave our respective apartments ever, ever again. Then we were asked who, exactly, was the wretched old man we’d brought into the living room. I told Mom he had given us shelter from the storm, and Joe performed a little bow and took my mother’s hand. “Name’s Joe,” he said. “Harvard class of ’11. I’m an author.” “Oh,” said my mother. “An author! Well, I do so appreciate you taking care of the children. Is there anything I can bring you? A cup of coffee?” “Dinner,” said Joe, “would be delightful.” ••• My father invited Joe to stay out of the rain at our apartment that night. We lit the seventh night candles and drank hot cocoa and watched them melt and just before Rebecca left for home she huddled with Sammy and me in our room. We emptied my cap and counted the day’s earnings. Five dollars and 65 cents. “That’s all?” shouted Rebecca. “Five measly dollars and 65 crummy cents!? People were giving us money all morning! Paper money!” “We bought Joe dinner.” “We bought Joe three dinners,” Sammy corrected me. “And a train ticket.” “Well,” said Rebecca, still shouting she liked to shout “how much did it all cost?” “It doesn’t much matter now, does it?” “How much?” “Six dollars.” “Six dollars?!” “Six dollars.” Rebecca bit her lip for a minute and wrinkled her brow, the same way she did over her math homework. “Eleven-sixty-five!” she said. “Eleven-sixty-five in one day, we made! Add the $17.69 we’d already made, that’s $29.34, take it from $40 and…We were only $10.66 short! Ten-sixty-six away from that awful bass violin with a whole day of Hanukkah left! One more day at the Village and we’d have made it!” “What do you mean ‘that awful bass violin’?” “I don’t even like the thing. I’m doing this for you.” “Dad will be fine without it,” I said. “He will not,” said Sammy. “Trust me,” I said. We stuffed all the money in a little shoeshine bag and I put it on the nightstand next to my bed. When we woke up in the morning, the bag was open next to a note Borrowed a nickel or dime or dollar or two For travel and coffee and bread and brew. Could be we’ll meet again. —Joe Three dollars were missing. Worse yet, my Yankees cap was gone, too. ••• There was no deceitful sunshine to start the morning, just a gunmetal sky that couldn’t make up its mind whether to rain or snow. I felt heavy and hazy in my head; my ears felt as if I’d stuffed them with cotton. It put a hush upon the day, a mood at once of gloom and relief. I spent the day sitting by my window reading “The Last of the Mohicans” for the fourth time. Sammy was in the living room, lying on the piano bench with his right hand stretched to the keyboard and plinking out perfunctory tunes. Rebecca wasn’t let out of her building any more than we were. My mother was knitting my father a scarf he’d no doubt treasure and never wear. My father was off selling life insurance. His broken bass violin was in Schulberg’s office. A not-broken bass violin was in Schulberg’s store. The best bass violin of all was somewhere in Vienna, in the memory of Vienna, in a ghost house full of ghost music encouraged and smiled upon by ghost parents and a ghost brother, a whole ghost world from which only my father and his love of music and his resilience emerged. My father would be fine without weekends in the Village and schoolnights playing for us and daily, tantalizing, cruel hopes that music, sweet music, could someday claim a still greater share of his life. My father would be fine, but I had to admit, sitting there reading of the great deeds an Indian prince did for his noble dad, that Aaron Grossman deserved to be better than fine, and that we had almost made it happen for him. Hanukkah’s eighth night would come and go and I had nothing for my father but a fond wish and all the respect in the world. It was nearly nightfall when I heard a high cackling voice from the sidewalk below my window. I looked out and there he was, old Joe, in his stained suit, a marble notebook in his hand, reading to the passers-by. At his feet was my Yankees cap, filled with money. “Joe!” I called out the window. He looked up. “Well hello there, young man! Didn’t realize I was in your neighborhood!” “Of course you did,” I said. “Of course I did,” he said. “I have something for you. Shall I come up or shall you come down ” I was already on my way, across the living room, pulling my brother from the piano bench, rushing out the door as my mother called for us to stay put or else. “Hey Joe!” Sammy shouted. “Whatcha doin’?” Joe hugged my brother. It was like they’d fought side-by-side in some war or traveled together on the continent. “Oh,” said Joe, “just a bit of reading.” “But Joe,” said Sammy, “ I thought you couldn’t read it until you were done.” “Guess I decided I’m done,” said Joe. Then he handed me my baseball cap. There was more money in there than we’d made all week put together. “How in the world did you do this?” I asked. “Been at it all day down in the Village,” he said. “When old Joe asks for a contribution, people have a way of listening.” ••• We all went to Schulberg’s that night, Joe too, and we lit the last candle and spoke the last prayers and sang “Rock of Ages” one last time. Outside the sky had made its choice at last and gone white and let loose its snow. The flakes fell in clusters, slow and lazy, igniting beneath streetlights like fireflies or falling stars, and all through the Bronx, late into the night, all the immigrants and immigrants’ children and immigrants’ children’s children, with all their grand dreams and simple pleasures, could watch the waning of the Hanukkah lights while listening to the sound of a man, one of their own, truly happy, playing his bass violin. Greg Blake Miller of Las Vegas writes the Fatherhood column each month. For comments: gregblakemiller@aol.com |
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