Barney's Version (30 page)

“Brides tend to be touchy about things like that,” he said.

“Yeah, I guess so. My luck, eh?”

Irv Nussbaum had radiated joy at his anniversary-dinner dance.

“Seen this morning's
Gazette
? Some guys shat on the front steps of the B'nai Jacob synagogue. My phone's been ringing all day. Terrific,
eh?” This was followed by a wink and an elbow nudge. “You dance any closer with her and I'm going to have to book you a room here.”

Saucy, voluptuous, smelling of everything nice, my future bride did not withdraw from my embrace on the dance floor. Instead, she said, “My father is watching us,” pressing even harder against me.

Seemingly polished bald head. Waxed moustache. Gold-rimmed glasses. Bushy eyebrows. Small beady brown eyes. Jowly. Cummerbund squeezing prosperity belly. Foolish rosebud mouth. And no warmth in that measured smile as he descended on our table. He was a property developer. A builder of biscuit-box office blocks and beehive apartment buildings, owner of an engineering degree from McGill. “We haven't met,” he said.

“His name's Barney Panofsky, Daddy.”

I accepted the offer of a damp, limp little hand. “Panofsky? Panofsky? Do I know your father?”

“Not unless you've ever been booked for anything, Daddy, and didn't tell me.”

“My father's a detective-inspector.”

“I say. Is he, indeed? And how do you earn your daily bread?”

“I'm in television production.”

“You know that commercial for Molson's beer, it's such a scream? The one that makes you laugh? Barney produced it.”

“Well, well, well. Mr. Bernard's son is sitting with us, and he would like to dance with you, precious, but he's too shy to ask,” he said, taking her firmly by the arm. “Do you know the Gurskys, Mr. … ?”

“Panofsky.”

“We're good friends of theirs. Come, my sweet.”

“No,” she said, yanking her arm free, tugging me out of my chair, and leading me back onto the dance floor.

You've heard of mock turtle soup? Well, the father of the bride turned out to be the ultimate mock
WASP
Jew. From the points of his waxed moustache to the toes of his Oxford wingtip shoes. Most days he fancied a pinstripe suit, his canary-yellow waistcoat enhanced by a gold pocket-watch chain and fob. For sojourns in the countryside, he carried a malacca walking stick and, out for an afternoon of golf with Harvey Schwartz, he wore plus-fours. But for dinner parties at his
Westmount manse, he favoured a magenta velvet smoking-jacket with matching slippers, and was forever stroking his wet lips with his forefinger, as if lost in contemplation of weighty philosophical problems. His insufferable wife, who wore pince-nez, jiggled a tiny bell each time the company was ready for another course. The first time I dined there, she corrected the way I wielded my soup spoon. Demonstrating the proper manner, she said, “Ships sail out to sea.”

Naturally the ladies took their coffee in the living room, while the chaps, lingering at the table, were offered port, the decanter passed to the left, as Mr. Mock
WASP
announced a subject worthy of debate: “George Bernard Shaw once said …” or “H. G. Wells would have us believe … Now what do you say to that, gentlemen?”

The old fool objected to me, of course. But, to be fair, he was one of those possessive fathers who would have been outraged by the thought of even a Gursky screwing Daddy's girl, not that we had gone that far yet. Complaining to her, he said, “He talks with his hands.” An attribute he considered compromising.
Très
Jewy. “I don't want you to see him again.”

“Oh, yeah? Well in that case I'm moving out. I'm going to rent an apartment.”

Where, in his mind's eye, the poor man visualized his precious one being ravished morning, noon, and night. “No,” he protested. “You will not move out. I won't stop you seeing him. But it is my fatherly duty to warn you that you are making a bad mistake. He comes from another
monde
.”

As things turned out, he was right to object to his daughter marrying such a scamp, but he did not intervene, for fear of losing her entirely. Summoning me into his library, he said, “I can't pretend this match delights me. You come from no family, you have no education, and you are engaged in a vulgar business. But once the two of you are wed it will be contingent upon my good wife and me to accept you as one of our own, if only for the sake of our beloved daughter.”

“Why, you couldn't have put it more graciously,” I said.

“Be that as it may, I do have one request. My good wife, as you know, was one of the first Jewish women to graduate from McGill. Class of '22. She is a past president of Hadassah and has had her name
entered in the mayor's Golden Book. She has been commended by our prime minister for the work she did with British children who were evacuated here during the last global conflict —”

Yes, but only after he had written to the prime minister's office, pleading for that letter of appreciation, which was now framed and hung in their living room.

“— She is a most fastidious lady, and I would be grateful if, in the future, you would refrain from garnishing your conversation with expletives at our dining-room table. Surely this is not too large an imposition to impose on your good self.”

With hindsight, there were things to be said in the old boy's favour. He had served in the Tank Corps during the Second World War, a captain twice mentioned in dispatches. Look at it this way. The sour truth is that many people whom liberals like me poke fun at — army colonels, dim private-school boys, suburban golfers, banal-tongued mediocrities, tiresome stuffed shirts — were the ones who went to war in 1939 and saved Western civilization, while Auden, ostensibly an anti-Fascist commando, fled to America when the barbarians were at the gate.
⁴⁰

My father-in-law's business reputation was impeccable. He was a constant husband, and a loving father to The Second Mrs. Panofsky.
Stricken with cancer only a year after we married, he behaved with dignity during his last wasting months, as stoic as any of the G. A. Henty heroes he so admired. Unfortunately, my relationship with both Mr. and Mrs. Mock
WASP
got off to a rocky start. There was, for instance, my first meeting with my future mother-in-law, a lunch
à trois
in the Ritz Gardens, arranged by my apprehensive bride who coached me for hours the night before. “You are not to order more than one drink at the table before lunch.”

“Right.”

“And, whatever you do, no whistling at the table.
Absolutely no whistling at the table
. She can't stand it.”

“But I've never whistled at the table in my life.”

Things started badly, Mrs. Mock
WASP
disapproving of our table. “I should have had my husband make the reservation,” she said.

It was an effort to begin with, the conversation halting, Mrs. Mock
WASP
infuriating me by demanding answers to direct questions about my family background, my past, my health, and my prospects, before I eased us into safer territory: the death of Cecil B. DeMille, how enjoyable Cary Grant was in
North by Northwest
, and the coming Bolshoi Ballet tour. In fact, my behaviour was four-star exemplary until she told me how she had adored
Exodus
, by Leon Uris, and, all at once, I began to whistle “Dixie.”

“
He's whistling at the table
.”

“Who?” I asked.

“You.”

“But I never. Shit, was I?”

“He didn't mean to, Mother.”

“I apologize,” I said, but when the coffee came I was so nervous I found myself suddenly whistling “Lipstick on Your Collar,” one of that year's hit numbers, stopping abruptly. “I don't know what's got into me.”

“I would like to contribute my share of the bill,” said my future mother-in-law, rising from the table.

“Barney wouldn't hear of it.”

“We come here often. They know us. My husband always tips twelve and a half per-cent.”

Next there came the dreaded day I was obliged to introduce my father to my future in-laws. My mother was already out of it by this time (not that she was ever deeply into it), wasting in a nursing home, her mind adrift. The walls of her bedroom were plastered with signed photographs of George Jessel, Ishkabibble, Walter Winchell, Jack Benny, Charlie McCarthy, Milton Berle, and the Marx Brothers: Groucho, Harpo, and, you know, the other one.
⁴¹
It's on the tip of my tongue. Never mind. The last time I had been to see my mother she had told me that a male orderly had tried to rape her. She called me Shloime, her dead brother's name, and I fed her chocolate ice cream out of a tub, her favourite, assuring her that it wasn't poisoned. Dr. Bernstein said she was suffering from Alzheimer's, but I mustn't worry, it needn't be hereditary.

In preparation for the visit of Mr. and Mrs. Mock
WASP
to my house, I drew a “W” with a ballpoint on my right hand, a reminder not to whistle. I purchased appropriate books and left them lying about: the latest Harry Golden, a biography of Herzl, the new Herman Wouk, a photo book on Israel. I bought a chocolate cake at Aux Délices. Filled the fruit bowl. Hid the liquor. Unpacked a box of hideous china cups and saucers I had acquired only that morning and set five places with linen napkins. I vacuumed. Plumped up the sofa cushions. And anticipating that her mother would find an excuse to look into my bedroom, I checked it out inch by inch for hairs that did not belong to me. Then I brushed my teeth for the third time, hoping to kill the Scotch smell. Mr. and Mrs. Mock
WASP
, as well as their daughter, were already seated in the living room when my father finally arrived. Izzy was impeccably dressed in the clothes I had chosen for him at Holt Renfrew, but, as a small act of rebellion, he had added a touch distinctively his own. He was wearing his snappy soft felt fedora with that ridiculous, multicoloured brush in the brim large enough to serve as a duster. He also reeked of Old Spice and was in a mood to reminisce about his old days on the beat in Chinatown. “We was young fellers, pretty smart, and we soon learned us a few words of China. We watched from the rooftops when they made their trades.
Then you could tell if they was smoking, because they always hung wet blankets on the street, due to the smell. Barney, would you pour me a Scotch, please,” he said, pushing away his teacup.

“I don't know if I have any,” I hissed, glaring at him.

“Yeah, and there's no coal in Newcastle,” he said, pronouncing the “t,”

“or snow in the Yukon.”

So I fetched him a bottle and a glass.

“What about you? Aren't you drinking this afternoon?”

“No.”

“
L'chaim
,” said Izzy, belting one down, my own throat dry. “There was girls involved, you know. Oh yes, it was — Christ — now you take the average French-Canadian family, I don't know about today but years ago they had ten or fifteen kids, so you know, they had nothing to eat, so they used to send the girls down there and one would bring another and you come in, you raid some place, you know, and you found four–five Chinamen with four–five girls, Christ, they'd even give them dope, you know. There was a lot of opium then. I'm talking 1932, when, you know, our entire detective force had only one automobile, a two-seater Ford.” Izzy paused to slap his knee. “If we catch us two crooks, you know, we'd just throw them across the hood and put the handcuffs on, and vroom-vroom, off we go. They'd be laying there like deer, you know, when you go hunting, they just lay on the hood.”

“But the engine was under it,” said my future bride. “Wasn't it hot?”

“We weren't going very far. Just to headquarters. And anyways I didn't feel it,” said Izzy, chuckling. “
They
was on there.”

“On second thought,” I said, not daring to look at my future in-laws, “I just might have a wee drink myself.” And I reached for the bottle.

“Are you sure, darling?”

“I feel a cold coming on.”

Izzy now cleared his throat, and shot a wad of snot into one of my new linen napkins. Bull's-eye. I sneaked a glance at my future mother-in-law, attracted by her rattling teacup.

“We'd arrest a guy, we'd take him downstairs to open him up, if you know what I mean?”

“You weren't gratuitously violent with suspected felons, were you, Inspector Panofsky?”

Izzy looked pained. “Gratuitously?”

“Unnecessarily,” I said.

“No fucken way, mister. I condoned it. Absolutely. But, you know, it's human nature, when a feller is young, you give him authority, he likes to push people around. But when I was young I didn't, because I knew my name was Panofsky.”

“But how did
you
get suspects to talk, Inspector?” asked my future father-in-law, looking directly at his daughter, as if to say, are you prepared to marry into such a family?

“I got my ways and means how.”

“How time flies,” I said, glancing pointedly at my wristwatch. “It's almost six o'clock.”

“You lay down the law to them. They don't want to talk, you take them down below.”

“Then what transpires, Inspector?”

“Well, we get this feller in the room, we slam the bloody door and then we start to throw chairs around. You know, scare the shit out of them. Maybe I step on his toes. Come clean, I shout.”

“What happens if, perchance, it's a woman you take downstairs?”

“Well I never remember — I'm sincere when I tell you about this — I never remember beating a woman, we never had occasion to, but if you get a tough guy, in many instances I could tell you …”

“Dad, may I have the bottle back, please?”

“Darling, should you?”

“Let me give you another for instance. In 1951 this was, I found those bearded rabbinical students were being beaten up outside their school on Park Avenue by all those punks. Just because they were Jews. Well, those punks they see you and I, well they doubt a little bit because we may not look too much like Jews, and we don't act it, but when they see a guy all dressed up, you know … Anyways their leader, this Hungarian roughneck, just off the boat, was caught, and I drove him to Station 17 to have a look at him. He's got those boots on, you know those big boots, rough as hell, I shut the door. What's your name, I says? I don't care about anybody, he says in that accent they have. His English is terrible. So I slammed him good, mister. Down
he goes. He passes out. Jesus Christ. I thought he would die. I tried to give him first aid. You know what passed through my mind? Just imagine … JEW POLICE OFFICER KILLS … if the guy died. So I rushed up an ambulance and we get him to come to …”