Grief Street

Gotham beneath the suburban glitz of this generally awful new Times Square. Dad, bless his heart, shoved enough coins into the tabletop juke for a fine medley, the first tune of which came up as Vera Lynn singing “ ’Til the Lights of London Shine Again.”
    I flashed on an old Lillian Ross story I read a number of years ago in The New Yorker magazine called “The Yellow Bus,” in which a gang of high school kids from Kansas visits New York City on their senior class trip. All the kids decide the city with its winos and grifters and noise and dirty streets is totally horrid— gross, as kids today would put it—except for a boy who knows at once that New York is the city of his dreams and destiny; the place that will allow him to soar above and beyond the lowest common denominator. One taste of the Apple, and this boy is gloriously seduced and corrupted, thus promising new life to the old town for all the rest of us.
    I imagined my own kid as that boy in the yellow bus. He was my kind of kid. Ruby’s, too. Right then and there in the Stardust Dine-O-Mat, I promised our kid good music on a juke, and to otherwise insure him with the strength and grace of real melody.
    My kid!
    I sipped my extra-extra-thick malted and stared at that tourist family in the next booth and thought about the sea of changes I have known in New York; how some of it gladdens me, how some of it pains my middle-aged heart. I said a little prayer that at least one of this mom and dad’s three wide-eyed kids would somehow be gloriously seduced and corrupted.
    Dad quietly settled the bill, and the family rose from their booth, moving toward the door. The juke was playing the last of Dad’s tunes, Coleman Hawkins’s rendition of “Crazy Rhythm.”
    The girl with the braces on her teeth stopped in the doorway, entranced, her ears cocked to hear the last swinging chords of the Coleman Hawkins orchestra. She tugged at her daddy’s sleeve and asked him, “Is that really the way it was?” And Dad said, “Yes, and it was great.” The girl said “Wow!” and gave joy to my New York soul.

    Walking toward home across Forty-third Street, with the malted milk a guilty lump in my stomach, I had less sanguine thoughts. Old Mr. Glick and his one-word message came to mind in a strangely urgent way. I stopped to use the public phone at Eighth Avenue, unable to wait until I was home and could call him from the comfort of my green chair. I dialed Glick’s flat in Herald Square.
    “Yes?” It was a pained, scratchy voice that answered, an old woman’s voice.
    “I’m calling for Mr. Glick, please. My name is Neil Hockaday.”
    “You’re the nice policeman who brought my brother home from temple?”
    “Oh, I’m speaking to his sister?”
    “Minnie Katz. It’s my married name.”
    “Is your brother there?”
    “Sam’s gone, Mr. Hockaday.”
    Did I ever know his name was Sam? No, and shame on me for that.
    “What time will he be in?”
    “He won’t.”
    “Mrs. Katz—?”
    “Sam’s gone.”
    I waited a moment. I could hear old Sam Glick’s sister using a tissue.
    “Mrs. Katz, I have to ask you something. It’s unpleasant. I’ll make it quick.”
    “About how Sam died?”
    “Yes.”
    “Don’t worry, Mr. Hockaday. It wasn’t like the rabbi. Nobody hurt Sam.”
    “Thank God.”
    “I should tell you, Sam loved the both of you young fellows. He was a plain man, from plain people in the old country. But you know, he had a welcome ear for the sound of intelligence. He told me all the smart talks you and Rabbi Paznik had. Oh, but he loved hearing them.”
    “Mrs. Katz, how did Sam die?”
    “He was old, he went in his sleep. Nice and peaceful. The day before, I knew he was leaving. You know how?”
    “How?”
    “Sam forgot his English. It flew from his head. Only Yiddish he could talk. And Hebrew, of course. So I just knew he was going away.”
    “I understand.”
    Then I heard Sam Glick in my head, and felt strange urgency again:
    A shadow, what is that? A destroyer of light, yes? Light we need to see. Therefore, we do not actually see a shadow, Maybe you think it’s crazy what I’m saying... I have known shadow in my life. Please understand me... We old Jews know what to fear in the dark: the terror of imagination... Och! In English I don’t know the words strong enough.
    “Sam tried calling you, Mr. Hockaday. He left a message with another policeman. Did you ever get it, dear?”
    “Yes— zachor.”

Twenty-six

    S