“How old do I have to be to use it?”
“Twenty-five,” she said, and just the number made her laugh harder.
“Okay, but is it still all right to say sponge?”
And there she went again.
Soon some people came along who were waiting for the bus, and we got up and let them have the bench and continued toward the shops. Walking seemed to cure my mom, and I was glad for that. I’d worried that the two delinquents might show up, because I was certain Mom wouldn’t fake them out again if she was unable to stop giggling.
We couldn’t afford to dine out often, and when we did dine out, we always went to the lunch counter in Woolworth’s, because as an employee Sylvia got a discount. That day, however, we went to a real restaurant, which she said was French, and I was relieved when it turned out they spoke English. The place had a holding bar with a scalloped canopy and a big mirror at the back, a black-and-white checkerboard floor, black tables and chairs with white tablecloths, and black booths with black-vinyl cushions and white cloths. The salt and pepper shakers were heavy and looked like crystal, and I was afraid to use them because if I broke one it would probably cost a fortune.
They had a few items for kids, including a cheeseburger, so of course I ordered that with fries and Coca-Cola. My mom had a green salad with sliced chicken breast on top and a glass of Chardonnay, and then we had what I called the best pudding in the history of the world and what Mom called crème brûlée.
We were waiting for that dessert when I leaned across the table and whispered, “How can we afford this?”
She whispered, “We can’t. We aren’t paying.”
Clutching the edge of the table, I said, “What’ll they do to us when they find out?”
“We’re not paying, your father is.”
Alarmed, I said, “He’s not coming back?”
“You know that quart mayonnaise jar he puts his pocket change in every night? When I packed his things for him, I didn’t pack that.”
“Maybe he’ll come back for it.”
“He won’t,” she said with conviction.
“But isn’t it wrong to take his money?”
“No, it’s his security deposit.”
“His what?”
“Landlords make you put down a security deposit, some hard cash, when you move in, so if you damage the apartment before you move out, they already have the money to cover it and don’t have to chase you for it. Your father never paid his share of rent since he moved back in, and he did some damage yesterday. He sure did some damage. So I kept his jar of change as a security deposit, and now he’s buying us a fancy good-bye lunch.”
Years would pass before I had crème brûlée again and could learn if it really was the best pudding in history or if it just tasted so good because of the circumstances. Nothing could have been better, after all, than the gift of an expensive good-bye lunch from my father without him there to ruin it.
That afternoon, we saw a funny movie starring Peter Sellers, and that evening I spent with Mr. and Mrs. Lorenzo, where I fell asleep on their sofa with Mr. Gluck’s pendant held tightly in my right hand. Sometimes I half woke and thought I could feel the feather fluttering softly. When my mother came home after midnight, following a four-hour set at Slinky’s, Mr. Lorenzo carried me up to our apartment, and I was so sleepy that Mom tucked me in bed in my underwear rather than make me get into pajamas. She wanted to put the pendant safely in a nightstand drawer, but I held fast to it.
I dreamed of a great white bird as big as an airplane, and I rode on its back with no fear of falling, the world sparkling below, forests and fields and mountains and valleys and seas where ships sailed, and then the city, our city. People looked up and they pointed and waved, and I waved back at them, and it was only when the bird began to sing that I realized it wasn’t as big as an airplane anymore and wasn’t in fact a bird anymore, but was instead my mother dressed all in flowing white silk, with wings more beautiful than those of a swan. Carried safely upon her back, I could feel her heart beating, her pure heart beating so steady and strong.
11
The following Sunday, June 12, Grandpa and Grandma drove downtown in their 1946 black Cadillac Series 62 Club Coupe, which they’d bought nineteen years earlier and which Grandpa had maintained in as-new condition. It was a big boat of a car yet sleek, with enormous bullet-shaped fenders front and back and fastback rooflines. Cadillac never made a car as cool thereafter, especially not when they went finny. Teddy and Anita took us to their place for an early celebration of my birthday, which turned out to be memorable.
They were amazed by my eidetic memory for music, which matured in me only as I had learned the piano from Mrs. O’Toole. On his piano in the front room, Grandpa Teddy played a number he was sure that I couldn’t have heard before, “Deep in a Dream,” written by Will Hudson and Eddie DeLange, who had a band together for a few years in the 1930s. He played it superbly, and when he finished, I played it with my limited skills and strained reach, but though I could hear the difference between us, I was thrilled to be able to follow him at all. He tested me with a couple of other pieces, and then we sat to play together. He took the left hand of the board plus the pedals, and I took the right, which was a trick but one that worked, and we ran through a tune I already had heard often, Hudson and DeLange’s “Moonglow,” and didn’t make one mistake in tempo or chords or melody, sweet and smooth to the end.
We might have sat there for hours, but what I think happened is that I was preening too much, and nobody wanted to indulge me if healthy pride in accomplishment might be souring into conceit. My grandparents had taught my mother—and she had taught me—that when you did anything you should do it well, not for praise but for the personal satisfaction of striving to be the best. I was young and only now discovering my talent, and I was exhilarated and prideful and probably getting obnoxious.
Grandpa Teddy abruptly stood up from the piano and said, “Enough. It’s my day off. Jonah and I are going for a little walk before lunch.”
The day was warm but not suffocating. The street maples, which would be scarlet by October, were green now, and a faint breeze trembled the leaves, so that on the sidewalk, patterns of light and shadow quivered like dark fish schooling in sun-spangled water, reminding me of the koi in Riverside Commons.
Grandpa Teddy towered over me, and he had a deep voice that made me sound like a chipmunk. He was as stately in his bearing as a grand ocean liner, while I was a bouncing little boat with a buzzing outboard motor, but he always made me feel that I belonged with him, that there was nowhere else he would rather be. We talked about all kinds of things as we walked, but the purpose of that stroll was what Grandpa Teddy had to say about my father.
“Your mother gave you a new apartment key.”