East Side Stories:Tales of Jewish Life in the Lower East Side of New York in the 1930's (5 page)

After the game, when Bulldog and the other player had departed, Kaplan sat at the kitchen table, put his winnings away in his pocket, leaned back in the chair and said, “Rifkeh, you know, your brother don’t look like you.”

The Canarrick began to laugh and said, “Mr. Kaplan, you got
kinder,
children? Three, I hear. Tell me, they look like each other, hah?”

Kaplan shook his head. “No,” he said. “Each one looks different. I don’t know why it is but it is.”

“That’s the way things are,” the Canarrick said stuffing the deck of cards into its box.

“What I’m saying is Rifkeh is so pretty.”

“And I’m not,” the Canarrick said with a shrug. “Lucky for her that she’s the one who’s
shayn,
pretty. A woman needs it. A man, he can get along without it. A woman should be pretty, beautiful, a man should be strong, that’s the way the world should be.”

Kaplan arose from the table, stared at Rifkeh as he slowly pushed his arm into the sleeve of his coat. “I’ll see you on Thursday, yeah?” She glanced quickly at the Canarrick, looked back at Kaplan, and nodded. He reached for her hand, held it, warm in his hand, covered it with his other hand and said, “I enjoy being here, Rifkeh.”

“It was a good game?” the Canarrick, still sitting at the table, asked.

“Yeah. Sure. I liked the game, why not? I always like to win. When do we play again?”

“Thursday?” the Canarrick said.

“Why not?” Kaplan replied. Still holding Rifkeh’s hand he said to the Canarrick, “Thursday I’ll win again. We’ll start at seven and I’ll stop by at half past six to see Rifkeh a little.” He stared at Rifkeh and said, “Yeah?” She nodded slightly to him and he gave a short hearty laugh.

When Kaplan had gone, Rifkeh turned to the Canarrick and said with a wild shake of her head, “I don’t want it, Canarrick. I can’t do it and I won’t do it, you hear me? I feel like a
koorveh,
you hear me? And what about Leo? What does he think? Men all around here. It was bad enough before, with you and me. But this Kaplan, what can Leo think of that? He’s no fool, I tell you. He knows what goes on. He sees what’s in front of his eyes—”

The Canarrick arose from his chair, went to Rifkeh. Lifting her face so that he could look into her eyes he said, “Rifkeleh, Rifkeleh, what’s the matter, hah? Are you going to bed with him? Did you invite him to come here now? No, he invited himself, he asks to see you. Yes or no?” Now Rifkeh’s head was resting on the Canarrick’s shoulder and he felt her weak nod. “So, tell me, what’s wrong?” She said nothing and he continued with, “And Leo? What can he think? A man comes, he plays cards with me and his uncle. So what? He sees me and the Bulldog play cards all the time with Adler and Levin. Yeah?” He looked down at her head and waited for her reply. There was none, and he asked in a somewhat higher tone of voice, “Yeah, Rifkeh?”

“Yeah,” she finally said, the word muted against the Canarrick’s shoulder. Still she felt that something was wrong. She lifted her head from his shoulder, looked up at him and asked, “We’ll get married after this? You promise?” And in a more resolute tone of voice, “I mean it, this time.”

“We’ll get married, I promise,” the Canarrick said. He kissed her, she held on to him for a moment and when they parted she glanced over her shoulder towards the bedroom where Leo slept as the Canarrick said, “You don’t worry about nothing. I’ll make enough to start a business, you’ll see, to take care of you.”

When Kaplan arrived for the following game, Leo said to his mother, “I’m going downstairs.”

“Go to the movies on Cannon Street,” she said. She looked for her purse but Kaplan had dug into his pocket and said to Leo, “Here, here’s a quarter. For the movies and some candy too. Here, take it.”

Leo hesitated. “Take it,” the Canarrick said to him.

Kaplan’s face took on a smile when Leo said faintly to him, “Thank you.”

Leo slowly took the coin. “Ah-h,” Kaplan said. “Like I said, a good boy.”

Leo ran out of the flat, down the stairs of the tenement, two steps at a time, running from that Kaplan, that kitchen table, and that game that was to be. He would be glad with the darkness of the Cannon Street Movies, with the distraction of the two main features there. of the unreal on the screen that somehow slowly evolved into a sort of reality, of the comedy short, of the newsreel, of the consumption of time.

He made up his mind that he wouldn’t leave the movie house until after ten-thirty or maybe eleven, even if that meant seeing something over again. Mr. Kaplan had insisted to the Canarrick that the games end no later than eleven o’clock during weekdays.

Leo waited until a quarter to eleven before he left the movie house. Walking up the stairs, he met Mr. Kaplan as the man was descending. “You liked the movies?” Kaplan asked. Leo nodded. “Good!” Kaplan said. “You enjoyed the movies and I enjoyed being upstairs, in the house.” With a laugh and more to himself than to Leo, Kaplan said, “I made twenty-four dollars.” He shook his head in some sort of small admiration, said, “Not bad, not bad. But still, not a big game.” And to Leo, “Go to bed,
boychick,
it’s late.”

“Yeah,” Leo replied. He watched as the man descended the steps.

The Canarrick had it all planned. He had Bulldog plant nine or ten boxed and sealed decks of marked cards in the four candy stores in the immediate neighborhood. Should Kaplan demand a fresh deck from some outer source, someone, even Leo perhaps, would be sent down to the candy store, and its owner, primed by Bulldog in advance, would accept payment for and sell the marked deck. Bulldog had promised to pay the candy store owners a few dollars for this service and they had agreed, readily. Wasn’t Bulldog hooked up with the gangsters and who wanted to start up with them? Who was crazy enough?

Leo had been in his bed hearing the Canarrick go over the plans for the upcoming game with Bulldog. Leo’s head had rolled back and forth on his pillow as he stared up at the darkened ceiling of his room. He didn’t want anything to do with the fake purchase of the cards, why were they involving him in this? He wanted desperately to separate himself from this—this thing, from all of it, from the card games, from Kaplan. Even the money that Kaplan gave him, Leo told himself, he wouldn’t take any more money from the man, nothing, not even a penny. He didn’t want it, it wasn’t right.

And what dismayed him most of all was his mother. She had done nothing bad with Kaplan, he knew that. He had heard some of the bad things some women could do to men, how they led them on, and the men like some dumb animals became more and more entrapped. It was something Leo couldn’t understand, what women did to men. And what disturbed him about the Canarrick were his promises to her that he would marry her. Sometime. Sometime. Leo had laughed caustically at that. Sometime never came. It was just a word, not even a promise, couldn’t his mother see that?

He felt terrible about his mother. He loved her. He knew how lonely she had been before the Canarrick had come along, how she had cried alone, those long loud cries during the night when she thought Leo had been asleep, how her life had filled out after she had met the Canarrick. But to Leo it still was a life of uncertainty, of unfulfilled promises, of empty words, and now, this conniving, this involvement of his mother in this plan. That was wrong, that should not be.

And also that Kaplan, looking at his mother with those wanting eyes, touching her hand, Leo couldn’t bear it. If only Leo could talk to his mother, warn her, tell her to stop. If only he could talk to the Canarrick. But why should he, Leo, be the one to do it when there was Bulldog who should watch over his sister? Where was Bulldog? What was he a brother for? Leo could talk to none of them.

It will work out, he said to himself attempting to console himself. It will. You’ll see.

The next game Kaplan lost three hundred and eighty-two dollars. After he was gone, Leo heard the Canarrick say to his mother and to Bulldog, “I got him! I got him! He wants to raise the betting. Next time will be the big one.” And to Rifkeh, “Be a little nicer to him next time, so far he gets from you is a little feel of the hands.”

“You shut up!” Leo heard his mother shout out. “What do you think I am, hah? You got your
farrfoylteh
game, your rotten game, if that’s what you do that’s your business. And you, Bulldock, I don’t want to hear from you either.”

Leo heard the Canarrick’s contrite reply, Bulldog’s annoying laughter as if he hadn’t heard his sister’s words, that laughter angering Leo. When his laughter had subsided Bulldog said, “Ai, sister, sister. You still got the old fire.”

When Bulldog left, Leo could hear his mother, in a pleading tone of voice, ask Canarrick, “When will we get married?”

“Right after I get Kaplan big this next game,” the Canarrick replied.

A different Kaplan entered the flat for the next game. This was a serious Kaplan, his face contained no smile, his looks at the Canarrick and Bulldog had hints of hostility. Even as he looked longingly for an instant at Rifkeh, something steely had crept into those soft stares. He ignored Leo.

Leo went into the bedroom, and opened his schoolbooks to his English homework. He began writing into his notebook.

Rifkeh, as she usually did, served tea. Kaplan drank his in complete silence, staring emptily over the edge of the glass. Standing behind him, Rifkeh shrugged as she glanced at the Canarrick who sat slowly sipping his tea.

Before the other player arrived, Kaplan said in a clipped tone, “We got a new deck, hah?”

“Sure, sure,” the Canarrick replied. “Leo,” he called out.
“Boychick.
Come out for a minute.” Inside the bedroom, Leo put down his pen, entered the kitchen. He approached the kitchen table, the Canarrick peeled a bill from a wad of money, said to him, “Go downstairs to the candy store and buy a
peckel,
a deck of cards. The good kind, not the cheap ones.”

Leo stared at the Canarrick. He didn’t want to look at Kaplan sitting there stiffly at the table. Leo stared at his mother. He didn’t want to go. No, it wasn’t fair, why should he be the one to go? Nobody asked him, they just told him, Do this, do that. He didn’t want their schemes, he wanted no involvement with what they were doing.

“Go, Leo,” Bulldog was saying. “Buy the cards.”

Leo’s mother, wordless, sat at the table, stared up at her son, her eyes moved to the Canarrick who said to Leo, “You’ll have a treat, you’ll go to the movies after. Go. Get the cards,
boychick.”
He held out a dollar bill.

Leo glanced once more at his mother who nodded. He took the money from the Canarrick, left the flat, and as he descended the stairs he was shaking his head, saying to himself, This is the last time. I mean it. I won’t do it again. Never! He was down now, outside in the street and as he walked towards the candy store he thought, Why me? They want to do it, let them go for the cards. I won’t.

He entered the candy store. The owner stood behind the counter. “A deck of cards,” Leo heard himself say.

“Yeah. Sure,” the man replied. His supply of playing cards was normally stacked in a slot in the wooden fixture against the wall which also contained packs of cigarettes. He reached down and removed a pack of cards from under the counter. Straightening up the owner asked, “Your uncle, he’s upstairs?” Leo nodded, and gave the bill to the man.

After he received the change from the man for the purchase, after he left the store, Leo could almost feel the man’s eyes following him. A wave of bitter resentment surged up in him. As he climbed the stairs of the tenement he banged his fist angrily over and over against the banister.

When he entered the flat, the tea glasses and the plates had been removed from the table, the other player was there. Without looking at Kaplan Leo placed the deck on the table, gave the change to the Canarrick.

The Canarrick, with a smile, gave Leo a quarter and said, “Go. Go to the movies. Buy yourself some candy.”

Leo, the coin in his open palm, glanced at his mother, she nodded. Without a word, without looking at Kaplan, he left the flat.

One of the features at the Cannon Street Movies was a western with Jack Holt, the other starred Buck Jones. Somehow Leo became lost in the screen, lost in the intrigues of the plots.

It was a little after eleven o’clock when Leo returned to the flat. His mother, the Canarrick, Bulldog were there. Kaplan and the other player were gone. The room smelled heavily of cigarette smoke which still hung billowed and crawled across the kitchen ceiling. Bulldog was laughing, the Canarrick, trilling his song, was staring down unbelievingly at a stack of bills.

Leo’s mother, her face impassive, looked at Leo as he entered and said, “Go to bed.”

Leo went into his bedroom, shut the door. outside, in the kitchen, he could hear the Canarrick say, each word stressed and elongated, “Over nine hundred dollars!”

“A fortune,” Bulldog said. “Just like you said, Canarrick.”

“Just like I said, yeah, Rifkeleh? Like I said, no?” the Canarrick said.

“Like you said,” Leo’s mother replied tonelessly. “You said other things too. Remember?”