Famous Builder (3 page)

My mother blinks. “It’s such a long ride.”

“Hon—”

“Weren’t we just there?”

Yes, they were, but the visit felt careful and strained, though he couldn’t bear to admit it to himself till now. Why did it seem he had nothing in common with his family anymore? When he tried to tell Steve about the jealousies he’s encountered from coworkers (they cannot bear his energy and speed), Steve stared at the football game, fumbled for his cigarette lighter or the beer bottle on the end table. They must make up for it this next time. They must have a warmer, more satisfying stay.

Don’t they know how much he loves them? If they only knew how much he loves them.

Maybe it will help if he gives Mom some money.

My mother pages through the new
House & Garden.
“Let’s take a look at houses.”

My father nods, rubbing his lower lip with his index finger.

They walk out to the parrot red Buick in the parking lot. (How did he end up in South Jersey? he thinks. Where are the mountains in the distance, all those beautiful languages—Slovak, Hungarian, Yiddish, Polish—on the streets?) In Delaware Township, on the east side of Haddonfield, they drive through the stone gates of Woodcrest Country Club Estates, “The Entrance to Elegance,” as it’s described in the newspaper ads. They tour the ranchers and split-levels—each decorated in a specific style—French Provincial, Danish Modern, Early American—each named for expensive cars: Fleetwood, Eldorado, Continental, Imperial. (Other developments in the area share a proclivity toward the flash and the glare. Haddontowne’s models, for example, are named for Miami Beach hotels.) After talking to the salesman, they check out the houses from the curb. Actually, they’re not even sure they like the place. What about those metal windows? And why do the houses look so severe from the side, like, well, bread boxes? But it
is
the up-and-coming neighborhood, says my mother. We don’t have to stay here forever. She’s right, thinks my father. And wouldn’t the family be proud? So much to see and do nearby: the Latin Casino nightclub; the Garden State Park racetrack; the Cherry Hill Mall; the Cherry Hill Inn, and all those other restaurants: Cinelli’s, Sans Souci, Irv Morrow’s Hideaway, and the Hawaiian Cottage, which is built in the shape of a squat gold pineapple with a jaunty green topknot. Already celebrities are moving onto the township’s curving, freshly paved streets. Walking into Shop ‘n’ Bag you might run into Al Martino, Connie Stevens, WFIL TV-show personality Sally Starr, and some of the major figures in organized crime.

I swim and somersault inside my mother. In but two days they’ll put a down payment on a Continental, which will be ready just in time for my birth.

***

My grandmother is hazy, enormous as a planet. I walk into Aunt Catherine’s living room to find her sitting on the red sofa before the TV, a look of emptiness on her face. She watches
Championship Wrestling
, the single program that seems to harness her attention. I’m four years old. A good boy, I kiss her on the cheek. Freshly bathed, she smells of lotion and yeast. “Hello, Grammy,” I say. “Nass boy,” she answers, eyes fixed to the screen. “Nass boy.” It’s the only thing she’s ever said to me. I know she doesn’t know much in the way of English, but I wish she’d try. I wish she’d call me by my name, see me as a separate being from my brothers and cousins. (Are we just puppies to her? A litter of yapping, wide-eyed puppies?) And why doesn’t anyone tell us anything about her? What is her favorite food? What was it like taking a ship across the Atlantic? And does she miss the streetcars and markets, the soot and the gray skies of Bratislava?

My father stands next to her. “Mom,” he says. “This is my son.”

“Son?”

“His name is Paul.”

I don’t understand why he talks to her as if I’m a stranger. We’ve had this exact exchange at least twenty times in my brief life.

She looks out at me, then up at my father with a dim, apprehensive expression in her eyes. Her lips move. She mumbles something to him in Slovak.

“No, no,” he says with a rueful laugh. “I’m TO-ny. Not Francie.”

Aunt Catherine walks into the room, wiping her hands on a dish towel patterned with hex signs. She already looks like a younger version of her mother; in twenty years she’ll have the same “Indian nose,” as she calls it. She senses something about the tightness of Grammy’s mouth and blinks. She lifts her up by the elbow (heavy, how heavy she’s become), guiding her toward the orange potty chair tucked in the corner of the living room. Grammy’s walk seems to embody a suffering larger than herself, the suffering of every ancestor who’d gone to bed hungry—the parched lips, the growling stomach—before being snuffed out. Is she getting sicker? Or dying? One thing is for sure: she must not end up at the “poor house,” as she calls the nursing home. She dreads it much more than death itself, so next week she will be shunted off to Francie and Goldie’s, then a few weeks later to Mary and John’s. There is no denying that everyone’s nerves are raw. As soon as she’s comfortable in one house, learning the trajectory of its hallways, the patterns of its sofas and armchairs, she’s off somewhere else, where she must start all over again, a permanent exile in the houses of her children.

Once she’s back from the potty, my father sits close to his mother on the couch and whispers in her ear. He seems to express far more affection for her than do my aunts and uncles. Is his affection part display? Is he trying to prove his devotion to the rest of the family? Although her eyes are still fixed to the wrestlers’ zany trunks (blues, violets, crimsons), her thoughts are elsewhere now, in happier worlds. She’s either back in Slovakia, dusting the rooms of the rich people for whom she once worked, or she’s already in the next world, nimble and alive, in a flowered dress and blue babushka, sweeping someone’s front steps.

***

Boxwoods, white birches, and cedar diadaras are planted in the backyard. Ethan Allen furniture is ordered from Haddon Wayside. It’s Easter, and outside, there’s a smell of hyacinth and lilac on the air. It’s the day of our relatives’ first visit to our new house, a custom-built brick rancher on an acre lot on Circle Lane in the Boundbrook section of Cherry Hill. (How quickly we’ve outgrown the place in Woodcrest. And those windows: my parents spent a fortune covering them with plastic in the winter.) I’m old enough to know how important this house is to them. It’s a symbol, a bold announcement.
I am to be taken seriously; I am worthy of something more than a mere development house; I have done something in the world.
And I’ve had all the proof I need by witnessing an exchange between my mother and an old friend of hers in the Haddonfield Acme. When she finds out that our house is in Cherry Hill, “in the new Kresson Road area,” her face opens; her bottom lip prickles and swells. “Fabulous,” whispers her friend.

Aunt Mary gets out of the car first. She looks out at the expansive front lawn, the squat Colonial lampposts at the head of the driveway. She touches the back of her head, swallows. Then Goldie, Francie, Elsie, and John get out, followed by Catherine and Joe, who pull up in their red Rambler.

Once we’re all in the foyer, I point to the baseboard next to the front door. “You should take off your shoes.”

“No, no,” my father laughs uneasily. “These kids …”

“But
you
make us take off our shoes.”

My father smiles at his siblings through gritted teeth.
“Paul.”

The tour commences. Everyone seems quietly respectful as they follow my father from room to room—the hearth room, the sunroom, the laundry room. Their shoes wisp the gold wall-to-wall carpet. Everything is perfect; every vase, book, and picture frame in proper position. Little do they know that we don’t always live this way. It must be the first time in months that my father’s papers and magazines don’t cover the kitchen table.

“I like the Queen Anne furniture,” notes Aunt Catherine. “Nice chair.”

“Pretty windows,” says Mary. “Are they hard to keep clean?”

“Look at the size of this cellar!” says Uncle John, who cups his hands around his mouth. “You could sell tickets and open a movie theater down here, Tony.”

Everybody laughs. I follow the grown-ups around like a spaniel with shining eyes. Afterward, I stand outside on the back patio and breathe in the brisk, lilacy air. I love seeing what we have through my aunts’ and uncles’ eyes; I love these physical demonstrations of our luck and our worth. The tiny leaves of the poplars glitter in the clean April light.

Once everyone has seen the house, we all crowd in our station wagon to go on a tour of our township. We walk beneath the wet, tropical trees inside the Cherry Hill Mall; we drive across the Barclay Farm development’s mock covered bridge; we drive past Muhammad Ali’s stucco rancher with its iron gates. We walk through scores and scores of sample houses with the latest features: wet bars, central vacuums, built-in log boxes, conversation pits. And there’s something called a bidet, which brings out the suggestive and shy in everyone. “What’s that for?” says Aunt Mary. “You know,” says Aunt Catherine. Aunt Mary stares at the low-slung, porcelain boat. I’m not sure I know myself. I imagine it has something to do with blood, with pregnancies. Or something darker. Then:
“Oh,”
says Aunt Mary.

The Beau Rivage, The Fontainebleau, The Ambassador, The Mark 70. So much newness! So much vitality, beauty, excitement for life! No more cramped tenements and fire escapes, no more dank lightless wells. History? Who needs it. Out with the old. We’re making ourselves anew. “Oooh,” we say, and look up at the huge Latin Casino sign against the twilit sky. On the glittering marquee with the gold flashing bulbs: DIRECT FROM THE LAS VEGAS STRIP: STEVE AND EYDIE.

We head out to a restaurant on Route 38 with flaring torches in its gardens and shields on its fieldstone walls. It’s in a round sunken pit and is known for its steaks and huge salads: an entire head of iceberg lettuce served in a teak bowl.

“Filet mignon,” my father says to the waiter in his official voice. “For everyone.”

“Now, Tony,” says Catherine.

“I insist,” he says, holding up his hand. “This is on me.”

Halfway through the meal a coiffed woman in a mink stole walks down the steps. Her husband, a slight, dark fellow with nebbishy glasses, touches the small of her back. She practices an expression of sophisticated indifference as they’re led to their table, but she wants us to look at her, to
see
her, more than anything else in the world. It’s what she lives for, this moment, this display. I turn to Aunt Mary. The woman has certainly captured
her
attention. “Rich people,” she says, her voice tinged with modesty and pain. It seems to hurt to look at them. Is she already thinking of the towering gas tank across Foundry Street, how it throws her humble house into shade?

***

If only Aunt Mary knew what really happens inside the houses of Cherry Hill.

I’m eating dinner at my friend Lisa’s house when all the lights go off. Immediately, we know it’s not a blackout; we can see the chandelier blazing through the window of the house next door. There’s a cone of light on the grass. With an astonishing poise, Mrs. Marx breezes into the dark kitchen, where she opens a drawer for a box full of matches. She returns to light the candlesticks on the table while her husband sits across from us, his head in his hands. Mrs. Marx smiles, but the match trembles between her fingertips until she burns herself. “Ah!” she cries, as it falls to the silver tray beneath. The next day Lisa tells me that they haven’t paid the electric bill. The card shop Mr. Marx has operated in Clementon for the past ten years cannot compete with all the chain stores that have opened at the nearby Echelon Mall.

And, of course, there’s the ongoing ritual, much less dire, in our own house.

My father stands at the kitchen table with a somber expression and hunts through the bags of groceries my mother and I have just brought home from Penn Fruit. “How much did you pay for this?” he says, holding up a bag of chocolate stars. “And what about this? Why do we need more ice cream? We already have some.” She runs water in the sink. She doesn’t answer. Hasn’t she done enough to scrimp and save? Hasn’t she filled the shelves of our pantry with store brands—Bala Club, Gaylord, Top Frost, Two Guys—instead of the pricier name labels? The afternoon sun shines on the yellow kitchen walls, heats up the skin of my forehead, blinding my left eye. Boundaries break down. I cannot tell myself apart from my mother, and surely, my father’s anger extends to me as well; haven’t
I
asked my mother for the candy? He looks down at the bag of chocolate in his hands, then shakes his head. Surely, we’re frivolous, extravagant. We don’t understand the meaning of good, hard work. For all we know, this single bag of candy could be the one purchase that ruins us, that brings the whole tower of match sticks tumbling down to the ground in a heap.

He tears open the edge of the plastic and hands me a star, waiting for me to accept it.

Then, with troubled relish, he eats one himself.

***

When my youngest brother Michael tells our mother she’s the “most beautiful woman in the world” (something which she remembers fondly to this day), I silently agree with him. She’s recently bought her first pair of bell-bottoms, and I’m quietly hopeful: Is this only the beginning? Will she start dressing like the mothers of some of our friends, like Mrs. Kasten, who walked down the Communion aisle last week in a low-cut black mohair top, demonstrating her cleavage à la Elizabeth Taylor, setting off a minor stir among the husbands in the church? My mother wears her new bell-bottoms everywhere, at choir practice, at the supermarket, and when I tell Aunt Catherine about it on the phone (she and Uncle Joe are coming to our shore house for the last week in August), she says, “Come
on.
”

“We’re serious,” I say. “We have a very modern mother.”

“Get
out.
”

But two weeks later I receive a postcard from Aunt Catherine:
I’m looking forward to visiting your 38-year old, hip swinging, bell bottoms mommy.