Sitting in the delicatessen across the street from the hotel, chewing on a fatty pastrami sandwich on stale rye bread, he thought about what Bessie had said. Such a change, such a change. Referring to the way he looked, of course, and not to what he had become.
He could remember his father’s last visit north, in March. He usually timed his semiannual pilgrimages so that one of them fell in September (when it was too hot and muggy to breathe in Miami) and the other just before his birthday in March, the better to remind his “delinquent” son that he was getting on in years (as he often said with a sigh) and didn’t know how many more birthdays he’d be here on earth to enjoy. The trips north, David realized now, were less necessitated by a burning desire to see his son and daughter-in-law than they were by the more urgent need to visit all the Josies, Roses, Lucys, and God knew how many other women in the New York Chapter of his father’s harem. “Would it break your heart to come to Miami once in a while? I have a sofa bed in the living room, you and The Shiksa could sleep on it.” How? David wondered now. Where would your plates sleep?
His father’s visit in March might have been less difficult if Molly hadn’t been away for the weekend in Hempstead, visiting her own parents. He remembered wondering at the time if she hadn’t planned it that way. Did Molly find his father as big a pain in the ass as David himself did? Despite the way she could still twist him around her finger? If Molly had been there, things might have been different. Molly knew how to handle him. Whenever his father came up with any of his frequent and preposterous proclamations, Molly brushed them aside as though they’d never been uttered.
“You should never order anything but spaghetti and meatballs in an Italian restaurant,” his father said.
“Then that’s what you should order, Dad,” Molly answered gently, meanwhile ordering for herself the tortellini alla panna as an appetizer and the osso buco for the main course.
“How much veal can there be on a bone shank?” his father asked.
But he studied Molly throughout the meal, and maybe — just maybe — considered whether his lifelong habit of ordering spaghetti and meatballs (What does he order in a Chinese restaurant? David wondered. Chow mein?) wasn’t quite as sophisticated as he’d imagined.
Molly knew how to handle him.
David’s mother had handled him in much the same way when she was still alive. Whenever his father said anything stupid (It was odd that David had never recognized his inanities then), his mother would flatten him in a minute with a gentle, “Oh, be quiet, please, Morrie,” or, on occasion and with the same pleasant smile, “Don’t be such a dope, Morrie.” When he was a boy, David could not possibly conceive of his father as a “dope.” Each time his mother squelched him, he would feel fiercely protective and would sometimes whisper a discreet, “Mom, please,” which his mother would wave off with an airy smile.
The first glimpse he’d had of the man his father was to become — or perhaps the man he already was, although as yet unrecognized — was on the very day his mother died, when David went with him to the funeral home to select a casket. His father shopped the rows upon rows of coffins as though he were considering stock for a new store he might open and close in a wink. He finally settled on a simple pine box that cost him only a couple of hundred dollars. He explained away his choice with a solemn, “In keeping with the Orthodox tradition,” an excuse in direct contradiction to the fact that he hadn’t been inside a synagogue — Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform — for as long as David could remember. That was the first time David noticed how short he was. He had always thought of his father as a tall man; now, suddenly, he seemed short.
His mother had left all of her belongings to her “beloved husband, Morris,” with the exception of her jewelry, which she directed be divided equally between her two surviving sisters. But the language in the will (even though David himself had drawn it) was somewhat vague about the disposition of two full-length fur coats, a mink and an otter, which David’s trust money had enabled her to buy. The language read, and David had thought it perfectly adequate at the time, “As for any of my other possessions for which my husband, Morris, may have no use, it is my wish that they, too, be shared equally between my sisters Naomi Blatt and Ruth Epstein.” His father had no conceivable use for a pair of fur coats styled respectively in the years 1968 and 1969. He offered them to Molly, but Molly had a mink of her own, as well as a raccoon, and, besides, she told him she would feel funny wearing clothes that had belonged to her mother-in-law. She suggested to David’s father that he simply send the coats to the sisters, as directed in the will. David’s father said, “What for? They both live in Florida. What use can they have for fur coats in Florida?”
David advised him that by any reasonable reading of the will, the coats could be considered “other possessions for which my husband, Morris, may have no use,” but his father remained adamant. “I’ll find a use, don’t worry,” he said. David’s mother’s initials were stitched into the lining of each coat. With the dedication of a cat burglar trying to fence stolen goods, his father looked through the telephone directories for all five boroughs, searching for any female with the initials E.W., calling at random to ask the baffled woman on the other end of the line if she might be interested in buying a pair of mint-condition fur coats. David told him he was inviting a midnight visit from a burly intruder who would conk him on his bald head and steal the coats from him. His father said, “So what am I supposed to do with them? I have no use for them,” acknowledgment in itself of his wife’s codicil, the contradiction completely lost on him. He steadfastly refused to send the coats to his sisters-in-law and at last sold them to a furrier on Canal Street for almost exactly what the funeral had cost him. It was David’s later contention that his father had been enormously annoyed by his mother’s untimely heart attack and had been determined that she herself (or at least her coats) should bear the cost of her burial.
The man who sat opposite him at the restaurant table on that weekend visit in March fussed over everything. He ordered a sirloin steak and then complained to the waitress that it was too well done — “Is this shoe leather?” — and asked her to take it back and substitute the pork chops instead, big Orthodox Jew that he was. While eating the pork, he told David he shouldn’t be eating pork, it gave him heartburn, he could already feel shooting pains in his chest. When David asked him why he was eating pork if he shouldn’t be eating pork, his father said, “What am I supposed to eat? That shoe leather she tried to palm off on me?” David was eating a dozen clams on the half-shell, ordered as a main course, and drinking the remains of his Canadian and soda. His father said, “You shouldn’t mix clams and alcohol. Your Uncle Martin, my brother, alav ha-sholom, died of mixing clams and alcohol. They turned to rocks in his stomach.” As far as David knew, his uncle’s death had been caused by a fall from a ladder and a subsequent concussion. Mildly, he responded that he’d been mixing clams and alcohol for years now and to his knowledge still had no rocks in his stomach. “The rocks are in your head,” his father said, and then immediately, “Okay, I’ll clam up, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”