Reed Coleman - Onion Street

More than a half hour had gone by when I realized I either needed to leave myself or to check out the house. Before getting out of my dad’s car, I looked around for something, anything that might prevent Bergman from recognizing me if he spotted me lurking. There it was on the floor of the backseat, my dad’s silly pork pie hat. My dad had grown up during a time when most men wore hats, but he hated that Aaron, Miriam, and I teased him about it. He pretended he’d stopped wearing one altogether, though we knew he just stashed it in the car. It was one of those little charades that made a family a family. Secretly, I think the three of us admired him for hanging stubbornly onto his tradition while trying to fool us. It gave us something to admire him for, and there wasn’t much else to choose from. Kids, especially sons, need to admire their dads.

I must’ve looked as ridiculous as I felt with my dad’s hat on. I folded the brim down like in Mad magazine’s Spy vs. Spy bits. Pacing across the street from the Tudor house, I had a good view down the driveway through the winter bare hedges. Besides the rust bucket, a white Renault Dauphine and a blue Chevy Impala were parked there. I also had a fairly unobstructed view of the living room window. When two people appeared in that window a few minutes later, I couldn’t quite believe my eyes, because I recognized both their faces. Although I couldn’t hear what was going on, it was pretty obvious from their body language, their facial expressions, and their angry gesturing that they were engaged in a nasty fight. I found I wasn’t as curious about the subject of the fight as I was about the warring parties. Why, I wondered, was Hyman Bergman shouting at Susan Kasten, and what were both of them doing in the living room of this big house in Manhattan Beach? Just what I needed, more questions.

“Hey, you!” A hand landed hard on my right shoulder at the same time I heard the man’s voice.

I was so surprised I nearly pissed myself. Instead, I turned slowly in the direction of the voice. And when I did, I smiled, because this was yet another face I recognized. “Dr. Mishkin,” I said. “How are you?” Dr. Raoul Mishkin had a practice in Brighton Beach, and had been our family doctor for as long as I could remember.

“Moses Prager. What are you doing in front of my house?”

“You live here?” I deflected as I about-faced. “Nice house.”

“Thank you, but I’ve known you since you were a little pisher . You can’t pretend with me, kid. I saw you pacing out here. So come on, out with it, why did you track me down? You got something to talk about with me that maybe you would be embarrassed to discuss in my office. Maybe something you don’t want your parents to know about.”

Look, if this is what he thought, I wasn’t going to try and dissuade him. Making something up was going to be a hell of a lot easier than explaining what I was actually doing there.

“It’s my girlfriend,” was all I said. He filled in the rest.

Mishkin shrugged his shoulders. “Pregnant, huh?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. She’s two weeks late.”

“Come, let’s go inside and talk. My wife will make something for us to eat and we can discuss your options.”

Doc took me in, introduced me to his wife, and then we went into his library. Fifteen minutes later, his wife brought us lox and onion omelets with bagels and coffee. We ate pretty much in silence. After some initial small talk, he gave me a lecture about what my girlfriend and I needed to consider. Illegal abortion never came up directly, but he sort of talked around it.

“If you and your girl are thinking about some other path, don’t rush to take it. It can be dangerous and you can get in a lot of trouble. Listen, I’m just a doctor, which, to tell you the truth, is like another name for being a fancy mechanic. As just a mechanic, I am not a wise enough man, not a philosopher to know what a life is or when it begins. Death, that I know a lot about, too much, I’m afraid. But once a life is ended, there are no second chances, no turning back, no do-overs. Do you understand what I am saying to you, Moses?”

“I do, Doc. I do.”

It was odd how I’d ended up in his library, but somehow I knew I would never forget his talk about a pregnancy that never was.

“Good. You always were a sharp kid.”

Then I had an idea, hopefully one that would finally lead to some answers. “So Doc, when I was standing on the street, trying to get up the nerve to knock on your door, I thought I saw someone I know in the house across the way.”

“Susan?”

“Yeah, Sue Kasten. We had a class together at BC last term. Does she live across the street?”

“Yes, she lives there now with her grandfather, Hyman. He’s a horrible human being. I suppose I should be more forgiving because he lost almost his whole family in the camps, but …” Mishkin didn’t finish his thought. “Susan moved in two years ago. Her mom and dad live out west somewhere, Oregon or California, I think. They’re university professors. Sherry, Susan’s mom, is Hyman’s daughter. Well, Susan wanted to come east to study and to get to know her family here. Hyman and Sherry hated each other and then she moved out when she turned eighteen, but apparently Susan wouldn’t be denied.”

“Big house they live in,” I said.

“Old Hyman’s loaded. Owns real estate all over the place, but he’s also a bisl meshugge . You understand?”

“I speak some Yiddish, Doc, yeah. The old man’s a little crazy. How so?”

“Maybe the camps did it to him. I don’t know. He drives a car that’s practically falling apart, wears clothes a bum would be embarrassed of, and runs a fix-it shop even though he owns the building it’s in and half the rest of the block. The man is wealthy, and doesn’t enjoy a penny of his money. He dotes on his granddaughter, though. Bought her that ridiculous French car in their driveway.”

I stood to go and shook Doc Mishkin’s hand. Thanked him for his advice. Then I remembered the tone in his voice when he’d first approached me outside. It wasn’t a very welcoming or friendly tone. I realized that he hadn’t recognized that it was me standing in front of his house until I turned to face him.

“Doc, when you came up to me on the street, did you know it was me standing there?”

“Nope. It’s that we’ve had a little crime in the area recently, and I didn’t like you loitering out in front.”

“Crime?”

“Yes. Earlier this week, Bob Schwartz, a friend of mine from down the block, had his Caddy stolen from right out in front of his house.”

“A Caddy. What kind of Caddy?”

“A beauty. A silver ’67 Coupe de Ville with a black vinyl roof. They found it smashed up over in Midwood somewhere during the snowstorm. The insurance company took it as a total loss.”

I forced myself to answer calmly. “That’s a shame. Well, thanks again, Doc. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

No lie there. He had given me a lot to think about. That, and some answers.

On the way over to visit my real girlfriend — the one in the coma, not the make-believe one whose period was two weeks late — I had a lot to chew on. I believed in coincidence more than the hand of God or fate or karma, but even I had my limits. There were just too many connections here to slough them off as mere coincidence. One thing was for damn sure: Bobby Friedman was, for some reason, the eye at the center of this storm. It seemed to me that all the new violence in my world somehow swirled around my best and oldest friend and I wanted to know why; I needed to know why. If he hadn’t shown up at 1055 Coney Island Avenue last night, I might not have seen Bobby as so central to what was happening; but he had shown up and with a set of keys.