Elizabeth McCracken - Niagara Falls All Over Again

“So,” said Pop, in a similarly cracked voice, “you’re a little late for dinner.”

My father, the comedian. At last we had something in common.

Annie had left the room; I could hear her talking to Rocky in the kitchen, the clang of dishes: she was trying to make up for the lack of cookies.

“Are you married?” Pop asked me. He’d probably been rehearsing that line too.

“No.”

He nodded, and then said, “Don’t wait too long.” Annie and Rocky appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. Already Rock was eating a beige boiled chicken leg. Then he saw my father and, thinking he should look presentable and be introduced already, tried to find a place to put it. Annie put her hand out, and he gratefully gave her the awful-looking thing. She took it with her back to the kitchen.

“Pop,” I said, “I want you to meet my partner. This is Rocky Carter.”

Rock knelt at my father’s feet, as Annie had, and shook my father’s ailing hand. “It’s a pleasure, sir,” he said.

“Mr. Carter,” said my father, nodding. “What is it that you do for a living?”

Rock looked up at me.

“He’s a comedian. Like me. We do an act together.”

“But after that?” said my father. He pointed at Rock. “Not forever.”

“Probably not,” said Rocky, “but for now.”

Pop regarded me with an expression I recognized. Hope. Sure: this was my partner, we were in some strange business together — why not stay here and take over the store? Always room for another name on the plate glass window: Sharp and Son and Friend.

“You,” said my father to Rocky. “Sir. Are you married?”

Rocky scratched the back of his head, ashamed. “That’s a complicated question.”

“Bah!” said my father, but he smiled. “You young men! Why do you wait like this? Not good to have children late. Too much time wondering, will they be orphans.”

Pop meant himself, of course: he waited, he worried. Now he looked at me. “Why I married your mother.”

“Why?” I asked.

“An orphan,” he said. “Now, I wonder like my friend the rabbi. What will become of my daughter? Who will marry her? An orphaned girl is hard to marry. You,” he said to Rocky. “You, perhaps.”

Rocky looked at me slyly. “Where is Rose?”

My father frowned, and hissed in contempt at such a question. “No. Not — Annie. Who will marry Annie .”

From the kitchen we heard the humiliated sound of someone trying to drown out gossip from the other room with running water. I couldn’t tell whether Pop’s eyes were so bad he couldn’t see that Rocky was young, or his memory so bad he’d forgotten that Annie was old. Middle- aged, anyhow: she was nearly fifty, too old even for a slaphappy friendly guy like Rock.

“You’ll stay for dinner,” my father said to Rocky.

I was about to make an excuse, but Rocky answered, wincing only slightly, “Thank you, sir. Of course I will.”

In the kitchen, I tried to ask Annie about Rose, but she hushed me, and pointed to the parlor. I understood only that my father did not want her name spoken. As the house filled up with my sisters and their families, Rose was not even mentioned. My sister Fannie arrived first, holding a fat pink baby I was shocked to learn was her granddaughter. “This is Great-Uncle Mose,” she said, waggling the baby into my arms.

“Oof,” I said. “Who are you? You’re heavy.”

“That’s Francine,” she said. “Marilyn’s girl.”

The baby scanned my forehead as though it were the morning paper.

That was how the night went: This is Leah’s Lou; there’s Sally’s David. I was as flummoxed as a total stranger, my sisters and their children had been so fruitfully multiplying. My brothers-in-law — Morris, Ben, Abe — each took me aside and offered me money. Abe, Sadie’s husband, actually slipped some bills into my hand. “Take it,” he said. “To set you up. I’m jealous, you know.”

“What of?”

We stood in the hall, and he peered into the parlor, teeming with babies and children and teenagers and wives. My God: how many sisters did I have? “Youth,” Abe said. “You know, I was a pretty fair dancer as a kid.” He gave his considerable belly a pat, as though it were a trunk that held all of his former success. “So take the money, and become famous with it, and maybe you’ll give me a part in one of your pictures.”

I didn’t need the cash, but you know what? His pride was worth more than my pride, so I took it. Seventy-five bucks.

I talked to Fannie, Sadie, Ida. I talked to their daughters — God’s fancy joke, all those girls turning into more girls, though in the next generation down there were plenty of boys, and I wanted to say to my father, See? You can leave the store to Max and David and Lou: Sharp and Great-Grandsons.

The dining-room table had been stretched to an Olympic length with leaves and card tables at either end; we all sat around it, some in the dining room and some in the parlor. My father sat at the head of the table, Rocky and I flanking him, the long-lost son and his portly goyishe fair-haired brother. The design on Rock’s dinner plate never saw daylight, with so many women rushing to serve him. He was extra-solicitous of Annie, who avoided him till she realized he wasn’t avoiding her.

“I thought tsimmes had carrots,” he said.

“No,” Abe said gravely — my God, I hope he didn’t slip Rocky money! — “Elsewhere, yes, but not in this family. Carrots in a tsimmes are a crime. Never speak of them.”

“I’m sorry,” said Rocky, just as gravely. “I didn’t know.”

“You’ll get the hang of it,” said Annie, ladling more tsimmes onto Rock’s plate.

When Abe made a reference to the European war, the sisters quieted him. Fannie, who was given to speaking what she believed was Yiddish so the children wouldn’t understand, said, “Ssshh. Der Kinder .”

“I’m saying only that at the Settlement House—”

“Tell me, Mr. Sharp,” Rocky said to my father. “When did you come to this country?”

My father turned to Rocky very slowly, brushing some crumbs out of his beard with the edge of his good hand. “Eighteen eighty,” he said. “First, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where I met my wife—”

“Sssh, sshh,” I said to some teenage niece, who was whispering about a boyfriend in my ear. All around the table, the Sharp children quieted whoever was talking. Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania? Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania ?

There is nothing the least bit shocking about Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. We had simply never heard my father suggest anything but that life began in Iowa.

All sides of the endless table grew silent. My father noticed, though he continued to address Rocky directly: he just spoke louder. It was an effort for him. “Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania,” he said, “was where I met Rabbi Louis Kipple.” He pointed down the table to the portrait in the parlor. “And his daughter, my Goldie.”

“Did you love her right away?” Rock asked.

My father smiled. “She did not make a good impression, no. She was not so fond of me. But she was new. I went to see the rabbi to ask a question. His wife, not a well woman, not a nice woman, answered the door with the baby, I asked for the rebbe, she thrust the baby into my arms, squalling and screaming”—my father mimed a thrust baby as best he could—“and so I met Goldie. But had I plans to marry then, no.”

Have you ever wondered about what happens before Genesis? Why didn’t God make Adam and Eve infants? My father had never told us this story. We had never asked.

Rocky said, “So then—”

“So!” said my father. “My question for Rabbi Kipple: How shall I worship when I travel? Shall I go to Iowa? We discuss. Fifteen years later his wife is dead, and he writes a letter: Can you get a minyan together in Des Moines, what about a shul, and then he comes, with Goldie, to Children of Israel. And then he grows sick, wants to arrange a wedding. Goldie prepared the meal. Awful. I thought, who will teach her to cook? A little Jewish girl, alone. Sixteen and fat. She would become a maid or shopgirl. I invited a child to live with me, I married her so no talk from the neighbors. I knew nothing of marriage. American marriages. They must involve love. Mine did.”