A FBOW excerpt in sequence: A New Kind of Restaurant

“Pa!”

Three years older than his wife, Morris Barrish had always been a robust, handsome man. Now his eyebrows were long and scraggly. The whites of his eyes were tinged with a slight yellow cast and a barely noticeable haze covered their grey, once hawk like corneas. The stubble of his beard pure white, the flesh beneath his chin hung looser than Mitchell remembered.

Perpetually a symbol of love and strength. Looking at his grandfather, now more than ever, the young man was sadly reminded of the old man’s age.

As the two men clasped each other in warm greeting, Mitchell forced himself to hold back tears.
________________________________________________

Sunday, August 26, 1956

Skokie, Illinois —

Finished with his third helping of fried matzo, “In about seven months, Pa...” and his third cup of coffee, “...if all goes well...” Mitchell said, “...I should be discharged just about the time the baby’s a month old.”

“And now they pay for the hospital, and a real doctor?”

“Well...” Mitchell said, “...the doctors at Public Health are real doctors…”

Finished eating after her first helping of fried motzo— which Marsha thought tasted like friend crackers which, actually thinking about it, that’s about what fried motzo is. “Yes, but now...” Marsha interjected. “...now, ‘thank God’, I can go to any doctor ‘I’ want.”

“Yeah, Ma...” squirming, tightening his sphincter against the first onslaught of stomach gas, “...and tomorrow we’ll talk to our neighbour who’s just had a baby and find our who she used.”

On his third cup of coffee also; as glad as Walter was to see his son and daughter-in-law it was, after all, a clear day with a steady northeast breeze so, If they leave soon enough, he thought, maybe I can still get…

Looking at him. Often having the uncanny knack of knowing what her husband was thinking. “Walter...” Myra said angrily, “...it’s ‘only’ a quarter after six and they’ll be leaving soon enough and we don’t see the kids ‘that’ often that you have to rush through breakfast so you can get to your ‘farshtinkener’ boat.”

Always mystified at his wife’s feat of —as she’d so often told him, ‘of knowing you better than you know yourself’.

“I’m not rushing! I was, uh...” Walter lied, “...thinking of Sam Katzman.”

“ ‘Sam Katzman’?”

“Yeah.” Speaking truthfully. “Sam called when you were out Friday.”

“Yes? So, what did Sam want?”

“He wanted to know if we’d like to go into a third share partnership with him and Milt Greenburg in some kind of a new kind of a restaurant.”

“ ‘Some kind of a new kind of a restaurant’? Why would we, ‘all of a sudden’, want to go into business with Sam Katzman and Milt Greenburg no less, in ‘some kind of a new kind of a restaurant’?”

“D’know. He said it’s, uh, different. It’s the, so Sam said, ‘the wave of the future’. He said he thinks it’ll be big, ‘really’ big! And that we can go in for a third share if we chip in three grand.”

“ ‘Three thousand’, from each of us? About ‘nine thousand dollars’ for some kind of a new kind of a restaurant that’s ‘different’!”

“Yeah! And it’s not really a restaurant because no one even eats there.” Thinking a moment… “It’s some kind of a place called a, uh, ‘fast food place’.”

“Some kind of a new kind of a restaurant called a ‘fast food place’ where no one eats there? That’s its name...” Myra asked facetiously, “...‘A Fast Food Place’?”

“No. ‘a fast food place’ isn’t its name. But it’s got some kind of a dumb name.” Thinking, “Uh, like in the song we used to sing with the kids when they were little, that kind of goes, ‘E’-’I’- ‘E’- ‘I’- ‘Oh’.”

“Oh!” Marsha said, “You mean ‘Old McDonald Had A Farm’!”

Going on in her same mocking tone, “That’s the name of this ‘fast food place’ that mo one eats there? ‘Old McDonald Had A Farm’?”

“ ‘No’!” Becoming somewhat flustered… Thinking a moment, “Yeah, something like that. But don’t worry, I told Sam that it doesn’t sound like such a hot idea and to count us out.”

****

Amidst hugs, kisses and fond farewells, its top open to the morning sun, the Ford convertible pulled away from the pie shaped lot in Skokie at 8:20 AM.…

****

They’d made this same journey on the day after their wedding. At that time, though, leaving later in the morning and as it was late December, running into snow flurries in New Jersey that had caused Mitchell to slow up considerably, they’d arrived in Seagate at 4:30 AM.

He calculated that this time, in late summer, they should arrive home between one and two AM.

They drove with the top down until the first gas fill at the last ‘’Howard Johnson’s’ on the Indiana Turnpike. Then, feeling the effect of the sun upon heads and shoulders, Mitchell pushed the button raising the top.

At 6:30 PM midway across the Pennsylvania Turnpike, they stopped for dinner of hamburgers and Cokes to use the toilet and top off the gas tank.

On the road again…

Marsha sat with her back against the door with her legs folded beneath her at a left angle.

Mitchell drove with his left hand on the steering wheel, his right hand as high beneath the cuff of Marsha’s jeans as possible. As tired as he was, holding her barecalf he had an urge to move his hand past the crook of her knee, to feel the smoothness of Marsha’s inner thigh.

“Mitchie...” seeing his weariness, attempting to keep him entertained with a stream of humorous chatter, “...did I ever tell you about when my uncle Willie was in the ‘Marines’?”

Mitchell glanced at his wife. Rhea’s brother, Marsha’s uncle Melvin, so she had told him, was a bookie—a taker of illegal betting—and Eli’s younger brother, Marsha’s uncle Bill, or ‘Uncle Willie’ as she called him, was a fence—one who buys and sells stolen merchandise.

Mitchell sometimes wondered about the family he’d married into: A mother who was, so her daughter had told him, the equivalent of a prostitute. An uncle that was a bookie, another that was a fence, so… “ ‘Willie’? A ‘Marine’?” he asked disbelievingly.

Laughing. “For three years, when I was five, six and seven, Mother and Daddy told me that Uncle Willie was in the Marines and every once in a while, on a Sunday, Daddy would borrow Uncle Harry’s car and Mother, Daddy, Bubby Goldman and me would drive all the way out to the Marine base… “

“ ‘Marine base’?”

“Yeah. But I could never understand why the guards at the gate always searched us and looked through the picnic basket.”

Mitchell liked Marsha’s uncle. After all, it was Bill that had given them this very same car they were driving as a wedding gift. But knowing him, and of him, he did not ‘quite’ believe that Uncle Willie could ever have been a Marine. Or for that matter even have been in the army… But then again, thinking, who knows?

“Well, Marcie...” he said, rather stupidly, “...maybe it was a secret base and things then, during the war were, you know, kind of secret there.”

Her hand on his atop the material of her jeans. “Yeah, but they only searched us when we came in and I could ‘never’ understand why guards walked around the walls with rifles. And I especially wondered why Uncle Willie ‘never’ came to visit us.”

Catching on, “Marcie, where was this, uh, ‘Marine base’?”

“When I first started to read...” Marsha went on, “...Mother and Daddy made up a game and told me to close my eyes when we got close to the gate, and when I did learn to read and could read what it said over the gate they stopped taking me when they went to visit Uncle Willie.” Stopping, she waited for him to ask…

“ ‘What did it say over the gate’?”

“ ‘State Penitentiary, Joliet’.”

Somehow not too surprised. “What was Bill in for?”

“I’m not too sure. But whatever it was, I guess he got caught.”

“Yup, it’s the old ‘eleventh commandment’.”

“ ‘Eleventh commandment’, huh. What’s the eleventh commandment?”

“He didn’t want me to be alone on my birthday, so Ruby came over Friday evening and we had a few drinks and I told him that, according to you, ‘thou shalt put the toilet seat down’ was the eleventh commandment. But he told me maybe putting the toilet seat down was the ‘twelfth commandment’ because the eleventh commandment is, ‘Thou shalt not get caught’, which apparently your uncle did… How long was he in for?”

“Seven years.”

“ ‘No shit’!” He tried to imagine what seven years out of his life might feel like but, just two days into his twenty-second year, seven years was a third of his life and the thought was incomprehensible.

“You have to have ‘some’ idea what your uncle did to get ‘seven years’?”

“I think because he received stolen merchandise and resisted arrested.”

Though he really did like ‘Uncle Willy’. Now knowing that he had been to prison, and possibly the reason he had been sent to prison, Mitchell could almost see that in a way the man did look a bit like a thug.

“Oh, yeah! Then there was this time my Aunt Dolly… You remember Dolly? Melvin’s wife?”

“Yeah. Melvin’s the ‘bookie’.”

“Yeah...They were both married to other people before, you know.”

“No! They’d ‘both’ been divorced?”

Mitchell had never known anyone who’d been divorced and now, to add to the mishmash of the characters in Marsha’s family, there was not one but two, and they were married to each other.

“Yeah, they were… I don’t suppose you’d noticed, but Aunt Dolly likes to drink a little and at our wedding…”

“Yeah, I ‘had’ noticed!”

An attractive, petite, tightly packed peroxide-blonde lady, ‘Aunt Dolly’ did drink more than a little at their wedding.

“Well...” Marsha continued, “...Dolly’s kind of a, uh, to say the least, vain kind of a person and, because she’d had her front teeth knocked out by her first husband, she wears a partial, and Melvin had never…”

Thinking, There’s a wife beater, too?

“Her husband beat her up?”

“Dolly’s ‘first’ husband! Yes. Anyway, Uncle Melvin had never seen Dolly without her partial, but she got so drunk at our wedding that she had to go into the toilet to puke and while she was puking she flushed the toilet and…”

“ ‘Uh, oh’!” Mitchell said.

“Yeah! ‘Uh, oh’, indeed! She puked her teeth out and flushed ’em down the toilet...Now you!”

“Now ‘me’ what?”

Tell me something about you that I don’t know.”

Mitchell never mentioned that night in Union Pier in 1950 when Ina Dorfmann knocked herself out by smashing her head onto the steering wheel of her father’s 1949 Pontiac when he’d shined a flashlight between her naked thighs to see what a vagina looked like because, in retrospect, it sounded too stupid, even to him.

“Well… I don’t think that I ever told you about the time I fell in the toilet at Hebrew school.”

“Wait a minute! That sounds too dumb ‘even for you’… ‘Really’! You fell in the toiled at Hebrew school! ‘How’?”

“Marcie, you’ve got to remember that back then I was a really horny dumb kid.”

Playfully pocking him in the ribs. “Kind of the way you are now, huh?”

Mitchell’s hand still beneath the cuff of her jeans, pushing it higher, now onto Marsha’s lower thigh… “Yeah.”

Retrospective Eight:

Chicago, Illinois September 25, 1946

Sitting on the ground in the corner of the playground with their backs resting against the chain-link fence. Making a small mound between his legs, Mitchell let pea gravel run through his fingers as Norman stabbed the hard earth with a blunt-pointed pocket knife.

It was a clear, Indian summer day, perfect for football, baseball—‘anything’ but Hebrew school.

“Oh, God, I don’t want to go in there today...” cocking his head in direction of the blistered-paint doors. “I hate it here an’ I got another full year to go… I’ll never make it! ‘Shit’!” For emphasis Mitchell threw a handful of the small, round stones; a few accidentally hitting the leg of a girl who was leaning against a fence-post reading.

“Hey!” she yelled, turning towards the boys, rubbing the calf of her right leg. “That’s ‘not’ funny!”

“Amy, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there!”

“What do you mean, you ‘didn’t see me’? You look at me all the time, you big, stupid jerk! You’re always looking at me and now you throw stones at me and say...” mimicking sarcastically, “... ‘I didn’t see you there’! Well, open your dumb, stupid eyes!”

Blushing, Mitchell looked away.

“You big, dumb, stupid jerk!” Squatting to pick up the stack of schoolbooks at her feet, her skirt hiked up over her knees and instinctively, without thinking, cocking his head downward, Mitchell tried to see up her skirt. Repeating, “ ‘Big, dumb, stupid jerk’!” With an annoyed flip of her honey-colored hair, Amy Pearlman angrily walked across the playground, well away from the boys.

“ ‘Shit’! Of all the people in the world, I gotta throw stones at her, an’ then try to look up her dress! Jesus! I am a jerk!”

**** 

Having had a crush on twelve-year-old Amy Pearlman since the first time he’d seen her. Sitting two seats behind and two aisles to the left, staring at her, Mitchell often daydreamed… trying to imagine Amy Pearlman naked.

Slightly overdeveloped for her age, Amy’s mother recently had her fitted with a training bra which she proudly wore; so while most of the girls in her classes were breastless, or appeared to be breastless, Amy was outstanding, looking almost like an ‘older woman’. To add to this impression she was also beautiful and, even at the age of twelve, Amy Pearlman ‘knew’ it.

Amy Pearlman had light brown eyes and soft, wavy hair. She was the girl and later the woman that boys, and later, men, would stop to stare at and follow longingly with their eyes. To top it all off, Amy was smart, always in the top five percent of her class. It was as though the genes of her parents had combined to make one flawless, beautiful, self-affected person.

Mitchell Lipensky ‘loved’ Amy Pearlman, and showed it.

Amy Pearlman ‘hated’ Mitchell Lipensky, and showed it.

Mitchell could not understand why. Why’s she hate me so much? He’d think. He was always courteous. Slowing up and dropping behind so he could hold the door open for her when the bell rang. If Amy dropped something he’d practically fall over himself picking it up. “Here, Amy,” he’d say, handing it to her, giving her his number-one prize-winning smile. And all he ever received for his effort was a reserved, ‘Humpff’! Never a ‘thank you’ or, God forbid, a returned smile.

The worse Amy treated him, the more Mitchell loved her.

The reason Amy Pearlman hated Mitchell Lipensky was simple—and not so simple. Of all the people she knew —relatives, acquaintances, friends— of ‘al’l of the people Amy knew, Mitchell Lipensky was the only person better looking than she. This fact did not register with her, though and truly Amy did not know the reason for her animosity or why she was so hostile while he went out of his way to be so nice. At times she was even angry with herself for treating Mitchell as horribly as she did.

****

“Conceited bitch!” Watching Amy as she’d strutted across the playground, Norman hit the crook of his elbow, giving her the ‘Italian salute’.

Following her with his eyes, “Yeah.” Mitchell sighed then, a few seconds later, “Normie,” he said, “I’ve an idea, I been thinkin’ a lot about…”

“Yeah?” Norman Parminter was wary of Mitchell’s ‘ideas’.

“Well, you know how you’n’me’s been wantin’ to see what a girl looks like...” touching his crotch, “...here.”

Cautiously, “Yeah?”

“Anyway, my idea’s…” Mitchell hesitated a moment, “...that you should sneak into the girls toilet so, uh… so’s you can see ‘it’ an’ then tell me what it looks like.”

“ ‘Me’? You want me to sneak into the girls’ toilet?” Laughing, Norman fell over, onto his side into the gravel.

“Shhh!” Starting to giggle Mitchell forced his growing laughter down. “Yeah!” reaching over, he pulled his friend up by the front of his shirt. “It’ll work! Listen…” His giggle returned but he suppressed it. “Listen to me, Normie, it’ll work!”

“You ‘gotta’ be kiddin’! You want ‘me’ to sneak into the girls toilet so’s I can watch ’em pee an’ see what her pisser looks like, an’ then I’m supposed to come an’ tell you, huh? Why me?”

“Yeah! It’s gotta be you, ‘cause you’re smaller’n’me.”

“You know what’ll happen to me if I got caught?” Without waiting for an answer. “My ma’ll ‘kill’ me, that’s what!”

“You ‘won’t’ be caught! But how’s come your ma’s all you ever worry ‘bout? How’s ‘bout your dad? Don’t he ever kill you, too?”

“Nah, I don’t worry ‘bout my dad killin’ me”

“Why, Normie? You dad’s a bull, an’ your ma’s a peanut.”

“Yeah, that’s why. He’s so strong, he’s ‘fraid if he hits me he’ll kill me, so he only pretends to hit me. My ma’s the tough one! An’ that’s why I ain’t gonna sneak into no girls’ toilet.”

“Normie, you won’t be caught! All’s you gotta do is…”

“Nope! I ain’t gonna do it!”

“…Just before recess, you come up with some reason to get out early...” he laughed, “...like puke on your desk or somethin’.”

“Nope!” Norman shook his head.

Ignoring him, “The girls’ toilet’s just like ours, two sinks an’ three toilets, only theirs got doors. You go in the middle one, close’n’lock the door an’ kinda fold your socks down so’s they look like bobby-socks, an’ when a girl comes in, you stay quiet a minute then, real quiet like, you stand on the toilet an’ look over the top, an’…”

“Oh, yeah, sure! What if she sees me… uh, you?”

“She won’t! Who ever goes to the toilet lookin’ up at the ceiling?” Answering himself. “No one goes to the toilet lookin’ up at the ceiling, an’ then you get a perfect birds-eye view! So, you gonna?”

“Nope! You’re the guy that’s interested in seein’ what girls pee out’a, so you do it!”

“Parminter, you’re a chicken-shit, schmuck!”

“Yeah, Lipensky, but a live chicken-shit, schmuck.”

****

4:00 p.m.: Sticking his arm through the door, Rabbi Meitzner shook the brass bell.

The kids shuffled into the stuffy building.

4:52 p.m.: Reading to themselves; with the exception of the rustling of clothing, the turning of pages, the occasional clearing of a throat and the buzzing sound of Rabbi Berkovitz’s snoring, the room was silent…

“ ‘Gaaaggghhh’!” Hiding his face behind the book with his index finger shoved down his throat, “ ‘Gaaaggghhh’!”

The harsh, gagging startled Rabbi Berkovitz who’d been dozing holding the book in his left hand and the side of his face in his right. “Vuzzit?” The old man had to catch hold of the edge of the desk to keep from falling off his chair.

“ ‘Gaaaggghhh’!”

The class looked in Mitchell’s direction.

Standing on wobbly legs, “Vuzzit?” Berkovitz asked. “Vos is doos?” Looking about the room with bleary eyes. “So, who’s sick?”

Holding his arm up, “Me, Rabbi, I’m sick.” Closing his mouth, Mitchell brought air into his cheeks causing them to puff outward, as though holding off vomiting. “Can I… ulp, go to the toilet?”

“Yes, Lipensky! Go! Go already.”

Glancing at Norman… Who was holding his hands together as though praying for the life of his dumb, but not chicken-shit friend… Doubled over, holding his stomach Mitchell rushed from the room into the hall, where he hesitated a moment considering the consequences if he got caught. But because he had told Norman he was going to do it he was committed and ‘had’ to prove that he was not a ‘chicken-shit schmuck’.

So he went on. Into the girls’ toilet. Into the middle stall where he closed and locked the door. Folding his pants legs up and his socks down he took a deep breath and waited for the recess bell

Mitchell’s legs were moderately hairy, but he knew that he had less hair on his legs—and for that matter on his face than a number of the girls there. With his crew socks folded into bobby socks, wearing a pair of nondescript sneakers, unless asked a direct question that he couldn’t answer with a grunt, he could not see why he wouldn’t pass for some hairy-legged girl using the toilet.

5:00 PM: The recess bell rung. He waited… But no one came in. Maybe it’s for the best, he thought. But, No, come on! I may never have the guts to do this again….

The door opened. Wanting to see what girl came in, he looked through the crack… Oh, my God! It’s Amy Pearlman!

Going to the stall on the right, she closed the door.

He heard the sound of paper being torn and by bending down was able to see the position of her feet. She’s covering the seat so she won’t have to put her tush where every one else’s tush goes. Her feet turned in the opposite direction. He heard the rustle of her skirt and the crinkle of cheap toilet paper as she lowered herself onto the toilet seat.

Sitting still. Hardly daring to breathe, he heard a sound: a soft tinkling sound. How cute!Then the harsh expulsion of air being forced through her rectum. A fart? He could not believe what he’d just heard. Amy Pearlman farts?

The thought never occurred to him that girls fart, too. God, he thought, I love Amy, and if I look at her here than I really am a jerk and she’ll have every reason to in the world to hate me. But... he rationalized… so long as she hates me anyway, and so long as I’m here…

Reaching back, covering the sound of his getting up and standing on the ring, he flushed the toilet, and the sound of water running through the pipe seemed to be deafening. Standing, he carefully placed first his right foot, then his left onto the cracked, wooden toilet seat. Rising from a stooped position, he carefully centered both feet and turned his body so he was facing the steel partition. But his position seemed precarious so, shifting his body slightly, moving his feet apart and leaning forward, looking over the top of the partition he could see the top of Amy’s head. Leaning further, he could see her bare thighs. Amy was squeezing a pimple! What, he thought, Amy Pearlman got pimples on her thighs, too!

Standing on tiptoes, leaning further to the left, Oh, shit! Girls don’t pull their skirts down like guys pull their pants down when they gotta make. Girls pull their skirts up! Why can’t Amy be like other girls and wear slacks or jeans?

Trying to see past the bulk of the bunched material, Mitchell leaned still further to the left...

The toilets had been installed in 1910, and the pins holding the seats had thirty-six years to rust to say nothing of— during the off and on years this had been the boys toilet —miss-aimed urine.

...Just a little further and maybe…

His leaning weight forced the seat back, putting a strain on the badly rusted pins…

One pin snapped and the seat slide backward and to the right…

With fingernails screeching down the metal partition, falling to the left, his shoulder thumping against the door, ‘kerploop’,his right foot splashing into the bowl, Mitchell suddenly found himself standing with one foot in the toilet and the other on the floor.

Oh, shit! What do I do now?

Startled by the sounds coming from the neighboring stall, looking at the partition. “What’s going on in there? You okay?” Amy asked. Getting no answer, “Jesus Christ,” she said, “I come in here to take a god-damned pee…”

Amy Pearlman swears, too!

“…and some idiot falls in the toilet! How’d the hell’d you do it? You okay?”

He had to say something. “Uh-huh,” in a high pitched, falsetto voice.

“Who’s in there?” Amy demanded. “Who the hell are you?”

Not answering. In spite of the cold, wet foot ‘kerplunked’ in the toilet, Mitchell began to sweat…

The clanging of the bell.

“Oh, well, whoever you are,” Amy said, “there’s the bell and I got to get going.”

He listened to the tearing and crinkling of toilet paper. Once, twice, three times. Finally the toilet flushed, the door opened and, going to the sink, Amy washed her hands.

“See you, whoever you are.” Amy called over her shoulder, then rushed back to the classroom.

Alone. What do I do now? Lifting his foot from the toilet, he shook it, then sitting on the seat removed both—the water-soaked sneaker and sock—and wrung them out.

Only one thing I can do.

****

“So, vere’s our Mr. Lipensky?” Looking about the room. “He’s so sick, maybe ve got lucky und he vent home. So, nu, anyone see Lipensky?” Rabbi Berkovitz turned his head as the door opened.

Coming into the room, “Uh, here, Rabbi. I’m feeling a little better.”

Mitchell, ‘squeek-squish’, walked across the floor to his desk.

‘Squeak! Squish’!

Grating, ‘squeek-squish’, his sopping sneakers left wet, shiny footprints on the worn, dirty linoleum.

Mitchell did not look at Amy Pearlman

But, oh, ‘yes’! Amy Pearlman did look at Mitchell.

August 27,1956

On The Road

12:33 AM

So...” Mitchell said, “...that’s how I Fell in the toiled in Hebrew school.”

“Don’t believe it.”

His wrist starting to ache due to the angle of his arm up Marsha’s pant-leg.

“You believe I shit on a bird?”

Pulling his hand out...

“No. Don’t believe that either.”

Rotating his wrist to get circulation flowing.

“Okay, remind me someday to tell you about ‘Ina Dorfmann’.”

“ ‘Ina Dorfmann’? From Union Pier.?”

“Yeah.”

Not surprised that Marsha knew her.

“The ‘blow job’ girl?”

Or knew ‘of’ her.

“Well, yes... I guess.”

“Tell me!”

“Some other time.”

“Okay! So tell me something else then.”

“Yeah...” cautiously asking, “...what?”

“ ‘Jya ever find out where a girl pees from?”

“Of ‘course’! I’m married aren’t I!”

“I never showed you!”

“You didn’t have to ‘show me’ because when we...You know, when I eat... uh, I figured it out myself.”

“About time.”

Resting the side of her head against the gentelly vibrating window, Marsha fell asleep.

Next FBOW excerpt in sequence: "Their Last Dinner"