Touch and Go Read Free Page B

neighbor woman into a new dress.
    It may have been in 1902 or ’03 when they arrived. It was quota time instituted by the Brahminesque Henry Cabot Lodge, a quota aimed primarily at Italian immigrants. A shoemaker, Nicolo Sacco, and a fish peddler, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, may have been among them.
    I look, from time to time, at an old-world gilt-framed daguerreotype of my mother, Annie, and my father, Sam. It is so obviously unlikely a pairing, and the photograph says it all. His curly-cued flowing jet-black mustachio gives him an Italian look: a Calabrian or Sardinian. He is Mateo Falcone of Sardinia’s best credentials for honesty, courage, and above all, sanctuary to all seeking to escape from authority. 3 His eyes appear bright, blazing and ready to face the day, whatever it may bring.
    She wears a pince-nez, which instantly adds an air of anxiety to her eyes that appears at odds with her piercing, squinty look. Could it be fear, for which I could sense no reason? I was about to say there was a wild touch to her portrait, but that would be redundant.
    These two were not born to be a vaudeville team. They were certainly no clones of George Burns and Gracie Allen. No, not even Broderick and Crawford, with the acerbic Helen and the easy-does-it Lester. HE: “Do you mind if I smoke?” SHE: “I don’t care if you burn.” How often had my brother Ben and I seen their act and how many times had we fallen out of our second balcony seats at the Palace on hearing that line as though for the first time?

    No, Sam and Annie were creatures of different spheres whom some God of the perverse had blessed and cursed into union.
    It was my father’s popularity among his landsmen and the women that I remember best. He was the one they all sought as a guest at gatherings. He was easy and quiet in speech and small matters, avoided gossip, admired Gene Debs because he thought all union people did that. It was Gene’s style of speech, easy as well as fervent, that won them over. My old man puffed away at his Mu-rads, sipped tea and sampled cakes—life was paradise now. Of the mother of us all, Annie, he said little in public; though there was much commiseration offered, he accepted none. The words he would say of her: “She’s a nervous woman.” He was right. She had from the moment she first appeared anywhere—a weekend vereins party, a neighborhood gathering—added not so much a spark as a blast to the proceedings.
    Consider a jovial gathering at the home of my wealthy uncle (the one who lent us money for our Chicago adventure, money which we returned), general laughter, sighs of contentment. It all changes in an eyeblink. She appears at the threshold. A sudden silence possesses the parlor. A tension. She merely poses, all 5’1” of her, smiles softly. The hostess timidly approaches her and offers tea and cakes. My mother demurely accepts. The festivities resume, but there is always the fear of some sort of outburst. It could be as mild as a narrowing of the eyes, or of slightly more dramatic intensity.
    Often Dora and Herb would appear at these gatherings of landsmen from the shtetl near Bialystok. Dora, working day and night running a bakery, is something of a lackey. Herb, always, always looking for work, somehow never finds any that suits him. Herb’s favorite pastime is puffing away on a Charles Denby ten-cent cigar. (Thomas Marshall, Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, memorably commented: “What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.”) While Herb is looking heavenward, admiring the smoke rings, my mother simply takes the cigar from his hand. As he watches, she smashes it into the standing ashtray, grinding and grinding until it is
bereft of smoke. “So much for you and your ten-cent cigar. Go help Dora in the kitchen. What is she, your slavey?” Perhaps she saw her own mother, Fanny, in Dora. Fanny, the widow baker, her hands huge from