Vanity
Julia Hirsch
Without even opening the thick grey envelope, Mischa knew what was inside: another reminder from Glatstein and Shatsky, “Brooklyn’s Premier Jewish Funeral Directors,” that his father, buried under a cardboard marker stuck in a gritty hummock on the MacDonald Avenue side of Washington Cemetery, was “only eight months away” from needing a headstone.
The thought of Jakov Granofsky’s soul wandering an American city without the protection of a simple granite slab troubled his only child. They had had a thorny relationship. For most of Mischa’s life in St. Petersburg Jakov had found Mischa’s slow movements, his mediocrity at school, and the softness of his body, which seemed incapable of growing well-defined muscles despite a daily round of pushups, infuriating. Nor did Jakov take any pleasure in Mischa’s position as junior instructor in electronics at the Normal School, and the blue ribbons—second prize—he’d won—in the city-wide ping pong competitions of 1977 and 1981. To complicate matters, Jakov was given to angry outbursts and scratching his crotch while bellowing, “Now here’s some manly stuff”, behaviors which revolted his son. Mischa had his mother’s delicacy: they shared a love of flowers, waltzing, opera, and pastries stuffed with sweet pot cheese. Her husband’s crude and sometimes violent disposition made Fanya dependent on her son for comfort and Mischa as alert as a canary in a mine to his father’s bad moods.
Fanya’s death, a few months before father and son came to America, began to change the balance of power between the two men and Jakov’s illness, which had started shortly after his wife’s death, closed the emotional gap between them. Jakov, the brutish father, became the weak, frightened child, and Mischa, the slow, underachieving son, became the reliable, resourceful caregiver. Jakov’s multiple illnesses took away his strength, while Mischa’s slow deliberate movements gave the old man the care and tenderness he needed and had always spurned in his healthier days. Jakov’s only acknowledgement of his son’s attentiveness was an occasional sigh of relief, but that sigh was enough to make Mischa feel he had done something right despite the intellect, the sharpness, the wit he felt lacked, he understood the frightened lonely underbelly of his father’s coarse, brutal soul. Mischa did not need Glatstein and Shatsky’s reminder of what he needed to do.
What he did need was to figure out how to get his father a simple headstone, something which just showed name and dates. That last filial duty accomplished he could then close the chapter of his life called “Father and Son.” After that he might start a new one, but he hadn’t yet determined what that would be: having made the enormous bold leap of coming to America, he wasn’t sure he had it in him to make the even bigger leap into the married state. Although Glatstein had an agreement with HIAS, the immigrant organization that helped indigent Jews get proper burial, their generosity didn’t cover head stones. Fanya had left Mischa a few thousand rubles—well under the $10,000 limit he was allowed to bring into the country as an asylum seeker—which he kept rolled up in neat little wads secured by red rubber bands in his safe deposit box at Astoria Savings. “For your wedding,” she’d said, hoping that at last in America he’d find a bride. While strong determined women were drawn to Mischa’s tenderness, he shied away from them. They breathed too heavily and reached for him in ways that made him feel like prey. The subdued ones, whom he might have managed, rebuffed even a caress on their cheek: they were looking for ambitious bold types out to grab the opportunities that opened up after the Dissolution in 1991 .
But he wasn’t quite ready to give up—neither on women, nor on the tombstone. He had started classes at New York City Tech in heating and refrigeration which guaranteed employment at the end of eighteen months; he had another sixteen to go. That was too long to wait for getting the tombstone. Bottles and tubes containing every kind of –ine, -on , -or, -ax and –az still covered the kitchen counter of the studio apartment he’d shared with his father and created a kind of archive of Jakov’s ailments. Some of the medications still bore their protective seals, others had been partially used. He could try to get a few dollars for them out of the Russians his father had kibitzed with on Ocean Parkway, other old timers who told each other war stories about Stalingrad and about the Siege. But first he’d try the pharmacist.
Mischa smelled the nasty odor of the smashed gingko pods all along Avenue L as he headed for Sadeh’s pharmacy a few blocks away. Mischa and his father had always appreciated the pharmacist’s cheerful “You’re looking good,” spoken in his melodic Farsi accent, his concerned “how is it today?”, and the handful of barley sugars wrapped in yellow cellophane which he pulled out of the drawer below the cash register and dropped into Jakov’s leathery hand. That store had been one of the few places where their foreignness was respected, even welcome. The medicine bottles rattled like small maracas in Mischa’s pockets.
He entered on 35th Street even though Sadeh had taped a handwritten “Please front door” to the side door. The last time he was in the store was a week before his father’s death. That was now three months ago and he wanted to slip in unnoticed, in order to prepare himself. The pharmacist, who’d fled the Shah, worried about shoplifters; to make sure no one snuck in he never had the radio on. Mischa caught sight of Sadeh at the other end of the store. He edged into the nearest aisle and paused at a display of undershirts. He was only familiar with white ones. Some red ones caught his eye. They would certainly give him a youthful look. In three months, he’d be turning 44.
Mischa was trying to figure out whether he was a “large” or “extra-large,” when he heard some very light skipping in the next aisle. That was followed by the sound of a heavy draggy foot, and one light one as if two children, one light and nimble, the other heavy and awkward, were hopping down an aisle. Mischa had never known Sadeh to tolerate children fooling around in his store, but perhaps times had changed. After a few more clomps, the sound subsided. Suddenly there was a huge clatter followed by rapid footsteps. Small things which sounded like marbles were rolling along the floor.
“Oh no!” Sadeh’s mellow baritone voice rung out. Mischa, curious to see to what Sadeh was reacting, inched to the end of the aisle and glanced around the corner. A cylindrical display case had tipped over. Dozens of what looked like fat two-inch golden cigarettes had scattered all over the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” a woman said. At first Mischa drew back. He didn’t want to get involved: he had his own business with Sadeh to deal with. But when he saw her head bowed in shame and heard her soft voice inflected with remorse he drew a little closer. Her long skirt and a long-sleeved blouse hung loosely. She was pale as if she rarely went out doors and had thick reddish-brown curls held in place by a wide white ribbon. A little boy stood at her side. His tiny fingers loosened his tight grip on her hand, as he dropped to the floor and started to root around.
“Why don’t you just ask? You know I’ll help you.” Sadeh had lowered his voice a couple of notches.
The woman kept shaking her head, “I’m such a klutz,” she murmured, “I’m sorry, so sorry.” Mischa inched closer.
Wands of lipstick had scattered along the aisle and under the shelves laden with cosmetics and hair ornaments.
“Mischa! Mischa !” Sadeh exclaimed, “Baruch Ha’ba! Welcome!” Whatever his words meant, he sounded relieved to have another person around.
Mischa dropped to his hands and knees and began to gather in the colorful merchandise. The woman’s pathos resonated with him. Although Sadeh was being patient, she had to feel the way he used to when he was having trouble pleasing his father. The little boy crawled close to Mischa, took the lipsticks from him one by one and slipped them back into their holders.
“Fun!” the child exclaimed.
Speechless, the woman stared at Mischa and Mischa held her gaze. She had the softest brown eyes. Her look of extreme vulnerability was almost too much to bear and he was glad that Sadeh was right there to remind him of the serious business he had come to transact.
“Glad to see you, Sadeh.” Mischa looked up.
“Good of you to do this,” the pharmacist said.
“Yes,” the woman whispered, “thank you, you’re very kind.”
“Is okay,” Mischa said, feeling his bulging pockets as he reached for stragglers under the display case. He came up with three more lipsticks. Within minutes the mess was cleared up.
The woman, with a cane in one hand, and the little boy’s hand in the other, made her way to the front of the store. Under her ankle-length skirt, Mischa spotted a heavy boot with a five-inch platform. The normal foot was shod in a shiny silver ballet slipper—a touching hint of some vanity, some sense of wholeness despite the disability. Mischa wanted to ask the woman her name, but he wasn’t sure that was proper. She might be married, the mother of the child, and think him a cad. She might be single and have a child, in which case, getting to know her would be full of complications. Perhaps he could ask Sadeh about her.
Mischa remained where he was. He watched Sadeh slip behind his counter and give the child a large green lollipop wrapped in cellophane. The woman ruffled the little boy’s head, displacing a tiny light blue and white skullcap pinned to his thick black curls and bent down to kiss his cheek. In that instant Mischa was five years old again and felt one of his mother’s kisses. He touched his cheek, then shook his head. The moment, the evocation, were gone.
“You don’t have to,” the woman said as she took a folded bill out of a pocket in her long skirt and put it on the counter. A single pink wand lay on the counter. The cellophane on the boy’s lollipop was crinkling loudly as he began to lick it vigorously.
“It’s on me,” Sadeh said, “but what on earth do you do with all those lipsticks? I don’t even see you wear any.”
“Mindy and Rifky, you know, they just love to play with them.”
“How many can they play with? By now you must have hundreds!”
“I don’t just get them lipstick, don’t you remember, sometimes I buy pony tail holders or banana clips, they’re just little girls who like to dress up. They say they want to grow up pretty, not plain Janes like me.”
“Well, you’re a really kind Dodah to all those girls. To Shmeuli, here, too, he’s really special.”
As soon as he was assured of Sadeh’s undivided attention, Mischa walked up to the counter, put down the package of T-shirts, drew the pills out of his pocket and lined them up next to the cash register.
“Barach há’shem,” Sadeh repeated, “am I happy to see you. You make yourself a stranger, then come in like a summer breeze, and make things right for that poor woman.”
The men were silent for a moment.
“It’s such a shame,” Sadeh said. “The nicest woman. Struck by a truck going in reverse when she was about ten. Happened a few months after I started here. Twenty-five years ago last month. Leg never grew right, despite dozens of surgeries. And that little boy. Her nephew. She’s just crazy about him.”
Mischa looked down at his feet—the nice white sneakers, only $2.99, he’d fished out of a sale bin at Robbins—and tried out different ways of asking Sadeh the woman’s name. But Sadeh beat him to it.
“Never seen her?” he asked. “Turansky. Across the street from you. Green door. Dov, her brother, is the nicest guy you could ever meet. You should get to know him. You never know. He’s helped me a lot, when I had trouble with the landlord. His cousin, actually.”
Mischa shook his head. He’d almost forgotten why he’d come to the pharmacy.
“But what about you?” Sadeh finally asked, breaking into Mischa’s thoughts. “How are you? How’s the Abba? He must be good, you haven’t come in to re-up prescriptions, no Serenity pads, no Epsom salts. Or maybe you go to CVS now?”
“You didn’t hear?”
“You got married.” Sadeh’s solemn expression broke into a big smile.
Mischa waved his hand as if he were flicking away a nasty insect. Sadeh usually knew everyone’s story up and down Avenue L right down to Coney Island, and he knew Mischa well enough to know what he was touchy about from the few times he’d tried to sell him condoms.
“He died. Soon after the last time I was here,” Mischa whispered.
“Baruch dayan emet,” Sadeh responded. Mischa had heard that phrase before but forgot what it meant. Probably something to do with God.
“I’m so sorry,” Sadeh continued. “Come to think of it, Hatzolah told me about an old man dying up the street, but I never thought of your Abba.” Sadeh paused a moment and bowed his head. “First your mother die back home. Then this.”
Mischa shook his head. He needed an opening to ask about the pills.
“So what happened? He had his troubles, what do you expect from a man his age, veteran and all that, but despite it all, he seemed so content.”
“So bad, I take him to Kings County.” Mischa could hardly remember the sequence of events.
“Terrible. No one should have to die there.”
“Yes, yes, terrible. Noise, so much noise, and all those black nurses and Indian doctors, they keep moving him from ICU to Dialysis, I don’t know what’s going on.”
The card from Gladstein and Shatsky suddenly popped into Mischa’s head. Maybe he could ask Sadeh about it. The way he dropped Hebrew phrases, the man had to know a lot about religious things.
“You took such good care of him, too.” Sadeh said.
Mischa sighed. Slowly he reached into his pockets. He put four bottles of pills on the counter. Sadeh picked up one of them, and looked at it.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Medicine he never use. You take back?”
“Are you kidding?” Sadeh sounded shocked. “I’d lose my license.”
“So what I do with this?”
“Flush them down the toilet. You got this on Medicaid. What do you care about the U.S. government? You’re not even a citizen yet.”
“You change label, sell again.”
“It’s against the law, I tell you.”
“At the Center, on Ocean Parkway, Russians sell pills. To take, to send home.”
“Terrible idea. You could kill someone, giving them the wrong drug, the wrong dosage. Don’t even think about it.”
Mischa was at an impasse. Perhaps he could bring up the matter of the tombstone, something for which he needed money.
“So what are you doing now?” Sadeh asked. “You were so good, taking your Abba all the way to Bensonhurst, to the Senior Center, making a nice life.”
“I don’t know,” Mischa said.
“No cousins? No aunts and uncles here?”
Mischa shook his head. Sadeh’s empathy was suddenly making Mischa feel very sad, very lonely, a prisoner confined to his history.
“You know what you need?”
Mischa looked up.
“You need a wife, a family. Nothing like kids to anchor a man.”
Mischa shoved the pills back into his pocket. His mother had nagged him enough to last him a life time about his single state. He should have followed her advice to approach some of the Afghan war widows in their apartment complex. They were more likely, she said, to appreciate an unassuming sober man like him.
“I go now,” Mischa said. He patted the package of red T-shirts he’d brought to the counter. They looked like strangers to him now, part of a different story.
“Listen,” Sadeh said, “I’m sorry about the pills, but the law’s the law. And here stuff about medication is serious. But come back to talk, hang out, what old friends do.”
Mischa nodded.
“What’s with the shirts?” Sadeh asked. “I give you a good price.”
“Another time.”
“On your way home, why don’t you check out that family. Such nice people. A bit religious, but nice.”
“Okay,” Mischa mumbled as he headed for the door.
“And don’t forget to invite me to the wedding,” Sadeh called after him.
Three days after his visit to Sadeh the thick August humidity that had blanketed Brooklyn lifted and Mischa woke up energized by the dryer air. Although he had gotten rid of the unopened letter from Glatstein and Shatsky, it was still on his mind, its ghost more powerful than its actual presence.
It took him less than an hour to reach Washington Cemetery. He hadn’t been there since the funeral and had forgotten what a huge place it was, an entire city of the dead, stretching all the way to the elevated on MacDonald Avenue. Somewhere amid hundreds of pink and grey and white stones, was the tiny mound that was his father.
He was ready to stride in when a guard stopped him.
“So who are we visiting today?” he asked. That use of “we” had annoyed Mischa at Kings County, the way doctors and nurses would ask his father, “And how are we doing today?” as if a number of people were sharing Jakov’s pain.
“Granofsky, “ Mischa answered, “Jakov. May 3, 2004.”
“At the back, lane 32, block 61.” The guard waved in the general direction of the elevated subway tracks. “Good luck finding it. This weather kills the markers.”
Mischa started walking. He still thought about his father every day. A clatter of a spoon falling into the sink, a car horn in the street, the smell of the kasha he ate for breakfast, lunch and supper, never one to seek variety in his diet, would trigger a memory. He could still feel the touch of Jakov’s shriveled skin as he bathed him, the smell of decay lifting off his body, the country smell he’d smelled during his summers in Pioneers, a mix of steaming compost, wet leaves, old shoes. Throughout his growing up, his mother had purred with approval and given him affectionate caresses, while Jakov could hardly manage a civil greeting. Mischa had longed for a tender pat on the back, a whispered “I love you, son,” warming his ear, but that gesture, those words never came.
Mischa began to notice the grave stones, the letters etched deeply into granite or marble. “Jack Maisel, grandfather, husband, brother, friend.” “Susan Fink, daughter, aunt, sister, cut off in her prime,” “Mable Farfelstein, mother, proud Hadassah chairwoman, best friend to all.” Row after row of American names, defined roles, no trace of history, of complications. Some stones were even double, one side already occupied and inscribed, the other one lying in wait. Death had made neighbors out of complete strangers, Maisel next to Fink, Fink next to Farfelstein so that whomever visited one of them, visited the ones nearby. But where would Granofsky fit in? He’d been a brave gunner, a fairly good mechanic, not much of a father or husband, not much of a friend, except at the end to the men at the Center with whom he reminisced about the War and played chess. Perhaps around lane 32, block 61, he’d find names and inscriptions that resonated with him, that would assure him that his father lay among men like him, born far away, severed from their roots, their histories.
As the far wall of the cemetery came into view the guard’s words came back to him. The mound that covered his father might be completely leveled, he might be lost in mud, Mischa stepping on him.
But then he saw it, it was still there, though a bit ragged, a bit beaten down. “Granofsky, Jacob, 1921-2004,” it read. The Russian spelling had been Anglicized, his father’s “k” and “v” turned into a “c” and “b.” Perhaps that was a good thing, perhaps it made his father blend in, be less alone in America.
He stared at the flattened mound. He knew his father was dead, he had seen him in the hospital morgue, waxy and grey, his face toothless and drawn, the eyes sunk in, an ancient mask. And he could still hear the sound of earth dropping on the pine box as it hung suspended on bands of canvas over the deep hole, and the plop plop of the clods of earth that the funeral director instructed him to throw on the casket. Even then, and still now, until this very moment, he had thought it was just possible that the old man had tricked him, that he was sitting in his battered chair in their decaying St. Petersburg apartment with one of the Afghan war widows on his lap, laughing at his son’s credulity, having a grand time of it.
The mound, as speckled as a grackle, was taking on a personality. It was no longer a nameless weathered irregularity in the soil. Here lay the last one who still remembered his birth, his first steps, his first words, here lay part of him, gone forever. “Ach,” Mischa cried aloud, sank to his knees and put his forehead on the rough pebble-studded soil. He felt the old man’s eyes on him, the way he had always peered at Mischa, at once questioning him, at once blaming him for the cruelties of time, of fate, his eyes so dark that the irises and the pupils blended into each other. Perhaps as if to make up for lost opportunities to have compassion for his son, Jakov would leap out of his grave, the burly man he had once been, and release his son to America. “Throw out the old, bring in the new,” Jakov might exclaim, “paint that dreary cave we lived in, and start your life! You’re a man now, at his prime!”
Mischa felt a light hand on his left shoulder. “Is that you?” He shuddered at the sound of a man’s voice. He looked up and tried to stand. His knees were wobbly from all that kneeling and he flopped a bit. The man reached down under his arm and helped him up.
The man’s eyes looked vaguely familiar but Mischa couldn’t place him. He was a stocky man, with something of Jakov’s build, a full seven or eight inches shorter that Mischa, with a few days’ growth of red- brown beard speckled with grey, and a black silky skullcap attached to his curly reddish brown hair with a large silver hair slide.
“My sister over there says she’s seen you around.”
“Your sister?” Mischa felt a bit dizzy. He flicked away the tiny clods of soil that had stuck to his knees and wiped his dirt-covered palms on the back of his trousers.
“Your sister?” Mischa repeated. On the soft ground of the cemetery, her movements made no sound as she approached, but her limp was still apparent. She wasn’t using a cane. Her large dark eyes looked right at him. Mischa thought he detected a hint of a smile, but he wasn’t sure and couldn’t bring himself to stare. She was wearing the same austere outfit that she had worn three days ago.
“Sadeh,” she said calmly, as if the pharmacist’s name were a greeting.
“Yes,” Mischa said, “good, good.” He wanted to do better but he couldn’t find the words to express how pleased he was to see her, to see her here, a spring breeze breaking into his loneliness, his sadness.
“By the way, I’m Dov, Dov Turansky and this is my sister Feige.”
“Mischa Granofsky,” Mischa responded.
“Your father?” Dov pointed to the spot where Mischa had been kneeling.
“You know?”
“We heard. From Evita, you know, the super’s wife.”
Mischa shook his head.
The thought that he had been talked about by strangers, let alone the woman who mopped the lobby floors, bothered him. He had little enough control over his life, he didn’t want people spying on him.
“Why?” Mischa asked.
“Don’t worry, she’s an old friend of ours, went to high school with my wife. Her husband does our repairs. And she knows we’re always looking for men like you, Jews who can come to our minyan.”
Sadeh’s words rang in Mischa’s ears. “A bit religious,” he’d said, “but nice.”
The three of them stood in silence for a while. All the dead seemed gathered around them, as if they were in a park or in the middle of a field observing some communal event.
“How about we say the prayers?” Dov said.
Getting his father into a pine box was about as far as he’d gone in Jewish observance: he avoided the young fellows in black hats who prowled around Kings Highway and who muttered “Are you Jewish?” as he walked by. Whatever he was was no one’s business. But right now the idea of praying with other people, even if it was only two, felt soothing, as if that might lift him beyond the anguish he still felt.
Mischa nodded.
Dov reached for his back pocket and took out a slim black book. He opened it and began to chant in a soft voice.
Ël moleh rachamim. . . “ Mischa looked at Feige. Her eyes were closed, her lips quivering slightly as if she were reciting the prayer to herself. He closed his eyes too, and let himself drift into the solemnity of the moment. Dov stopped, then continued.
“Yiskadal, veyis kadal, shemey rabbah.
Mischa had heard those words before, perhaps even said them at the funeral. And he’d met them years earlier when his mother recited them at the huge synagogue on Lermonsovski Street. Suddenly it didn’t matter that he mouthed sounds that were entirely alien to him, that he didn’t read them out of a book the way Dov did, they brought him closer to these strangers.
The prayers were over. Mischa opened his eyes. Dov and his sister were standing where he’d last seen them, a few feet away from each other, a few feet away from him.
“Our parents are buried over there.” Dov pointed to a row of pink and grey granite and marble gravestones a few dozen feet away.
“They died close to each other, ten, twelve years ago. We come here every few months.”
It somehow heartened Mischa to think he could be back here again.
Mischa nodded. His father was less alone now. In this place, the past could live forever. Both father and son might even feel the presence of Fanya, his mother, thousands of miles away in Prebrazhenskoe Cemetery.
Neither Dov nor his sister gave any indication that their time of prayer was over. Mischa wondered what was going to happen next. He looked at the woman whose name he didn’t want to say and wondered how he might start a conversation without her brother listening in. It would have to start right away with a basic question. But he could be a bit indirect. He might say for instance, “Does your husband sometimes come here with you?” Depending on her yes or no, things might be hard or easy.
“A stone?” he said after a while, “your parents have stone?”
“Yes, of course, over there, you see that big shiny boxy-looking thing?”
The monument Dov was pointing to was indeed massive, room enough, Mischa thought, for a family of five.
“I don’t know what to say, for father,” Mischa said, “Maybe you help?”
“Why don’t you come home with us now,” Dov said, “and we can work on it.”
Mischa shifted his weight, as if he were trying out his feet. Dov reached for his elbow. The two men began walking, gradually adjusting to each other’s pace. Dov’s sister walked behind them.
At the Ocean Avenue entrance, Mischa caught the guard’s eye. He wanted the guard to see the transformation in him, to observe that he had come in alone but was leaving with a friend, maybe even two if he counted the woman. A cemetery was the house of the dead, but it was also a place for the living.
When they reached Dov’s car—a shiny black sedan--Dov opened the passenger side for Mischa and ushered him into the front seat. The woman eased herself into the rear. She had to raise her long skirt a bit, to avoid tripping over it. Today Feige wore sturdy brown shoes, the blighted foot shod the same way as the intact one, vitality and infirmity in balance, giving her secure footing in soil, in rock, in mud, in the unadorned, in the timeless.
Julia Hirsch
Without even opening the thick grey envelope, Mischa knew what was inside: another reminder from Glatstein and Shatsky, “Brooklyn’s Premier Jewish Funeral Directors,” that his father, buried under a cardboard marker stuck in a gritty hummock on the MacDonald Avenue side of Washington Cemetery, was “only eight months away” from needing a headstone.
The thought of Jakov Granofsky’s soul wandering an American city without the protection of a simple granite slab troubled his only child. They had had a thorny relationship. For most of Mischa’s life in St. Petersburg Jakov had found Mischa’s slow movements, his mediocrity at school, and the softness of his body, which seemed incapable of growing well-defined muscles despite a daily round of pushups, infuriating. Nor did Jakov take any pleasure in Mischa’s position as junior instructor in electronics at the Normal School, and the blue ribbons—second prize—he’d won—in the city-wide ping pong competitions of 1977 and 1981. To complicate matters, Jakov was given to angry outbursts and scratching his crotch while bellowing, “Now here’s some manly stuff”, behaviors which revolted his son. Mischa had his mother’s delicacy: they shared a love of flowers, waltzing, opera, and pastries stuffed with sweet pot cheese. Her husband’s crude and sometimes violent disposition made Fanya dependent on her son for comfort and Mischa as alert as a canary in a mine to his father’s bad moods.
Fanya’s death, a few months before father and son came to America, began to change the balance of power between the two men and Jakov’s illness, which had started shortly after his wife’s death, closed the emotional gap between them. Jakov, the brutish father, became the weak, frightened child, and Mischa, the slow, underachieving son, became the reliable, resourceful caregiver. Jakov’s multiple illnesses took away his strength, while Mischa’s slow deliberate movements gave the old man the care and tenderness he needed and had always spurned in his healthier days. Jakov’s only acknowledgement of his son’s attentiveness was an occasional sigh of relief, but that sigh was enough to make Mischa feel he had done something right despite the intellect, the sharpness, the wit he felt lacked, he understood the frightened lonely underbelly of his father’s coarse, brutal soul. Mischa did not need Glatstein and Shatsky’s reminder of what he needed to do.
What he did need was to figure out how to get his father a simple headstone, something which just showed name and dates. That last filial duty accomplished he could then close the chapter of his life called “Father and Son.” After that he might start a new one, but he hadn’t yet determined what that would be: having made the enormous bold leap of coming to America, he wasn’t sure he had it in him to make the even bigger leap into the married state. Although Glatstein had an agreement with HIAS, the immigrant organization that helped indigent Jews get proper burial, their generosity didn’t cover head stones. Fanya had left Mischa a few thousand rubles—well under the $10,000 limit he was allowed to bring into the country as an asylum seeker—which he kept rolled up in neat little wads secured by red rubber bands in his safe deposit box at Astoria Savings. “For your wedding,” she’d said, hoping that at last in America he’d find a bride. While strong determined women were drawn to Mischa’s tenderness, he shied away from them. They breathed too heavily and reached for him in ways that made him feel like prey. The subdued ones, whom he might have managed, rebuffed even a caress on their cheek: they were looking for ambitious bold types out to grab the opportunities that opened up after the Dissolution in 1991 .
But he wasn’t quite ready to give up—neither on women, nor on the tombstone. He had started classes at New York City Tech in heating and refrigeration which guaranteed employment at the end of eighteen months; he had another sixteen to go. That was too long to wait for getting the tombstone. Bottles and tubes containing every kind of –ine, -on , -or, -ax and –az still covered the kitchen counter of the studio apartment he’d shared with his father and created a kind of archive of Jakov’s ailments. Some of the medications still bore their protective seals, others had been partially used. He could try to get a few dollars for them out of the Russians his father had kibitzed with on Ocean Parkway, other old timers who told each other war stories about Stalingrad and about the Siege. But first he’d try the pharmacist.
Mischa smelled the nasty odor of the smashed gingko pods all along Avenue L as he headed for Sadeh’s pharmacy a few blocks away. Mischa and his father had always appreciated the pharmacist’s cheerful “You’re looking good,” spoken in his melodic Farsi accent, his concerned “how is it today?”, and the handful of barley sugars wrapped in yellow cellophane which he pulled out of the drawer below the cash register and dropped into Jakov’s leathery hand. That store had been one of the few places where their foreignness was respected, even welcome. The medicine bottles rattled like small maracas in Mischa’s pockets.
He entered on 35th Street even though Sadeh had taped a handwritten “Please front door” to the side door. The last time he was in the store was a week before his father’s death. That was now three months ago and he wanted to slip in unnoticed, in order to prepare himself. The pharmacist, who’d fled the Shah, worried about shoplifters; to make sure no one snuck in he never had the radio on. Mischa caught sight of Sadeh at the other end of the store. He edged into the nearest aisle and paused at a display of undershirts. He was only familiar with white ones. Some red ones caught his eye. They would certainly give him a youthful look. In three months, he’d be turning 44.
Mischa was trying to figure out whether he was a “large” or “extra-large,” when he heard some very light skipping in the next aisle. That was followed by the sound of a heavy draggy foot, and one light one as if two children, one light and nimble, the other heavy and awkward, were hopping down an aisle. Mischa had never known Sadeh to tolerate children fooling around in his store, but perhaps times had changed. After a few more clomps, the sound subsided. Suddenly there was a huge clatter followed by rapid footsteps. Small things which sounded like marbles were rolling along the floor.
“Oh no!” Sadeh’s mellow baritone voice rung out. Mischa, curious to see to what Sadeh was reacting, inched to the end of the aisle and glanced around the corner. A cylindrical display case had tipped over. Dozens of what looked like fat two-inch golden cigarettes had scattered all over the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” a woman said. At first Mischa drew back. He didn’t want to get involved: he had his own business with Sadeh to deal with. But when he saw her head bowed in shame and heard her soft voice inflected with remorse he drew a little closer. Her long skirt and a long-sleeved blouse hung loosely. She was pale as if she rarely went out doors and had thick reddish-brown curls held in place by a wide white ribbon. A little boy stood at her side. His tiny fingers loosened his tight grip on her hand, as he dropped to the floor and started to root around.
“Why don’t you just ask? You know I’ll help you.” Sadeh had lowered his voice a couple of notches.
The woman kept shaking her head, “I’m such a klutz,” she murmured, “I’m sorry, so sorry.” Mischa inched closer.
Wands of lipstick had scattered along the aisle and under the shelves laden with cosmetics and hair ornaments.
“Mischa! Mischa !” Sadeh exclaimed, “Baruch Ha’ba! Welcome!” Whatever his words meant, he sounded relieved to have another person around.
Mischa dropped to his hands and knees and began to gather in the colorful merchandise. The woman’s pathos resonated with him. Although Sadeh was being patient, she had to feel the way he used to when he was having trouble pleasing his father. The little boy crawled close to Mischa, took the lipsticks from him one by one and slipped them back into their holders.
“Fun!” the child exclaimed.
Speechless, the woman stared at Mischa and Mischa held her gaze. She had the softest brown eyes. Her look of extreme vulnerability was almost too much to bear and he was glad that Sadeh was right there to remind him of the serious business he had come to transact.
“Glad to see you, Sadeh.” Mischa looked up.
“Good of you to do this,” the pharmacist said.
“Yes,” the woman whispered, “thank you, you’re very kind.”
“Is okay,” Mischa said, feeling his bulging pockets as he reached for stragglers under the display case. He came up with three more lipsticks. Within minutes the mess was cleared up.
The woman, with a cane in one hand, and the little boy’s hand in the other, made her way to the front of the store. Under her ankle-length skirt, Mischa spotted a heavy boot with a five-inch platform. The normal foot was shod in a shiny silver ballet slipper—a touching hint of some vanity, some sense of wholeness despite the disability. Mischa wanted to ask the woman her name, but he wasn’t sure that was proper. She might be married, the mother of the child, and think him a cad. She might be single and have a child, in which case, getting to know her would be full of complications. Perhaps he could ask Sadeh about her.
Mischa remained where he was. He watched Sadeh slip behind his counter and give the child a large green lollipop wrapped in cellophane. The woman ruffled the little boy’s head, displacing a tiny light blue and white skullcap pinned to his thick black curls and bent down to kiss his cheek. In that instant Mischa was five years old again and felt one of his mother’s kisses. He touched his cheek, then shook his head. The moment, the evocation, were gone.
“You don’t have to,” the woman said as she took a folded bill out of a pocket in her long skirt and put it on the counter. A single pink wand lay on the counter. The cellophane on the boy’s lollipop was crinkling loudly as he began to lick it vigorously.
“It’s on me,” Sadeh said, “but what on earth do you do with all those lipsticks? I don’t even see you wear any.”
“Mindy and Rifky, you know, they just love to play with them.”
“How many can they play with? By now you must have hundreds!”
“I don’t just get them lipstick, don’t you remember, sometimes I buy pony tail holders or banana clips, they’re just little girls who like to dress up. They say they want to grow up pretty, not plain Janes like me.”
“Well, you’re a really kind Dodah to all those girls. To Shmeuli, here, too, he’s really special.”
As soon as he was assured of Sadeh’s undivided attention, Mischa walked up to the counter, put down the package of T-shirts, drew the pills out of his pocket and lined them up next to the cash register.
“Barach há’shem,” Sadeh repeated, “am I happy to see you. You make yourself a stranger, then come in like a summer breeze, and make things right for that poor woman.”
The men were silent for a moment.
“It’s such a shame,” Sadeh said. “The nicest woman. Struck by a truck going in reverse when she was about ten. Happened a few months after I started here. Twenty-five years ago last month. Leg never grew right, despite dozens of surgeries. And that little boy. Her nephew. She’s just crazy about him.”
Mischa looked down at his feet—the nice white sneakers, only $2.99, he’d fished out of a sale bin at Robbins—and tried out different ways of asking Sadeh the woman’s name. But Sadeh beat him to it.
“Never seen her?” he asked. “Turansky. Across the street from you. Green door. Dov, her brother, is the nicest guy you could ever meet. You should get to know him. You never know. He’s helped me a lot, when I had trouble with the landlord. His cousin, actually.”
Mischa shook his head. He’d almost forgotten why he’d come to the pharmacy.
“But what about you?” Sadeh finally asked, breaking into Mischa’s thoughts. “How are you? How’s the Abba? He must be good, you haven’t come in to re-up prescriptions, no Serenity pads, no Epsom salts. Or maybe you go to CVS now?”
“You didn’t hear?”
“You got married.” Sadeh’s solemn expression broke into a big smile.
Mischa waved his hand as if he were flicking away a nasty insect. Sadeh usually knew everyone’s story up and down Avenue L right down to Coney Island, and he knew Mischa well enough to know what he was touchy about from the few times he’d tried to sell him condoms.
“He died. Soon after the last time I was here,” Mischa whispered.
“Baruch dayan emet,” Sadeh responded. Mischa had heard that phrase before but forgot what it meant. Probably something to do with God.
“I’m so sorry,” Sadeh continued. “Come to think of it, Hatzolah told me about an old man dying up the street, but I never thought of your Abba.” Sadeh paused a moment and bowed his head. “First your mother die back home. Then this.”
Mischa shook his head. He needed an opening to ask about the pills.
“So what happened? He had his troubles, what do you expect from a man his age, veteran and all that, but despite it all, he seemed so content.”
“So bad, I take him to Kings County.” Mischa could hardly remember the sequence of events.
“Terrible. No one should have to die there.”
“Yes, yes, terrible. Noise, so much noise, and all those black nurses and Indian doctors, they keep moving him from ICU to Dialysis, I don’t know what’s going on.”
The card from Gladstein and Shatsky suddenly popped into Mischa’s head. Maybe he could ask Sadeh about it. The way he dropped Hebrew phrases, the man had to know a lot about religious things.
“You took such good care of him, too.” Sadeh said.
Mischa sighed. Slowly he reached into his pockets. He put four bottles of pills on the counter. Sadeh picked up one of them, and looked at it.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Medicine he never use. You take back?”
“Are you kidding?” Sadeh sounded shocked. “I’d lose my license.”
“So what I do with this?”
“Flush them down the toilet. You got this on Medicaid. What do you care about the U.S. government? You’re not even a citizen yet.”
“You change label, sell again.”
“It’s against the law, I tell you.”
“At the Center, on Ocean Parkway, Russians sell pills. To take, to send home.”
“Terrible idea. You could kill someone, giving them the wrong drug, the wrong dosage. Don’t even think about it.”
Mischa was at an impasse. Perhaps he could bring up the matter of the tombstone, something for which he needed money.
“So what are you doing now?” Sadeh asked. “You were so good, taking your Abba all the way to Bensonhurst, to the Senior Center, making a nice life.”
“I don’t know,” Mischa said.
“No cousins? No aunts and uncles here?”
Mischa shook his head. Sadeh’s empathy was suddenly making Mischa feel very sad, very lonely, a prisoner confined to his history.
“You know what you need?”
Mischa looked up.
“You need a wife, a family. Nothing like kids to anchor a man.”
Mischa shoved the pills back into his pocket. His mother had nagged him enough to last him a life time about his single state. He should have followed her advice to approach some of the Afghan war widows in their apartment complex. They were more likely, she said, to appreciate an unassuming sober man like him.
“I go now,” Mischa said. He patted the package of red T-shirts he’d brought to the counter. They looked like strangers to him now, part of a different story.
“Listen,” Sadeh said, “I’m sorry about the pills, but the law’s the law. And here stuff about medication is serious. But come back to talk, hang out, what old friends do.”
Mischa nodded.
“What’s with the shirts?” Sadeh asked. “I give you a good price.”
“Another time.”
“On your way home, why don’t you check out that family. Such nice people. A bit religious, but nice.”
“Okay,” Mischa mumbled as he headed for the door.
“And don’t forget to invite me to the wedding,” Sadeh called after him.
Three days after his visit to Sadeh the thick August humidity that had blanketed Brooklyn lifted and Mischa woke up energized by the dryer air. Although he had gotten rid of the unopened letter from Glatstein and Shatsky, it was still on his mind, its ghost more powerful than its actual presence.
It took him less than an hour to reach Washington Cemetery. He hadn’t been there since the funeral and had forgotten what a huge place it was, an entire city of the dead, stretching all the way to the elevated on MacDonald Avenue. Somewhere amid hundreds of pink and grey and white stones, was the tiny mound that was his father.
He was ready to stride in when a guard stopped him.
“So who are we visiting today?” he asked. That use of “we” had annoyed Mischa at Kings County, the way doctors and nurses would ask his father, “And how are we doing today?” as if a number of people were sharing Jakov’s pain.
“Granofsky, “ Mischa answered, “Jakov. May 3, 2004.”
“At the back, lane 32, block 61.” The guard waved in the general direction of the elevated subway tracks. “Good luck finding it. This weather kills the markers.”
Mischa started walking. He still thought about his father every day. A clatter of a spoon falling into the sink, a car horn in the street, the smell of the kasha he ate for breakfast, lunch and supper, never one to seek variety in his diet, would trigger a memory. He could still feel the touch of Jakov’s shriveled skin as he bathed him, the smell of decay lifting off his body, the country smell he’d smelled during his summers in Pioneers, a mix of steaming compost, wet leaves, old shoes. Throughout his growing up, his mother had purred with approval and given him affectionate caresses, while Jakov could hardly manage a civil greeting. Mischa had longed for a tender pat on the back, a whispered “I love you, son,” warming his ear, but that gesture, those words never came.
Mischa began to notice the grave stones, the letters etched deeply into granite or marble. “Jack Maisel, grandfather, husband, brother, friend.” “Susan Fink, daughter, aunt, sister, cut off in her prime,” “Mable Farfelstein, mother, proud Hadassah chairwoman, best friend to all.” Row after row of American names, defined roles, no trace of history, of complications. Some stones were even double, one side already occupied and inscribed, the other one lying in wait. Death had made neighbors out of complete strangers, Maisel next to Fink, Fink next to Farfelstein so that whomever visited one of them, visited the ones nearby. But where would Granofsky fit in? He’d been a brave gunner, a fairly good mechanic, not much of a father or husband, not much of a friend, except at the end to the men at the Center with whom he reminisced about the War and played chess. Perhaps around lane 32, block 61, he’d find names and inscriptions that resonated with him, that would assure him that his father lay among men like him, born far away, severed from their roots, their histories.
As the far wall of the cemetery came into view the guard’s words came back to him. The mound that covered his father might be completely leveled, he might be lost in mud, Mischa stepping on him.
But then he saw it, it was still there, though a bit ragged, a bit beaten down. “Granofsky, Jacob, 1921-2004,” it read. The Russian spelling had been Anglicized, his father’s “k” and “v” turned into a “c” and “b.” Perhaps that was a good thing, perhaps it made his father blend in, be less alone in America.
He stared at the flattened mound. He knew his father was dead, he had seen him in the hospital morgue, waxy and grey, his face toothless and drawn, the eyes sunk in, an ancient mask. And he could still hear the sound of earth dropping on the pine box as it hung suspended on bands of canvas over the deep hole, and the plop plop of the clods of earth that the funeral director instructed him to throw on the casket. Even then, and still now, until this very moment, he had thought it was just possible that the old man had tricked him, that he was sitting in his battered chair in their decaying St. Petersburg apartment with one of the Afghan war widows on his lap, laughing at his son’s credulity, having a grand time of it.
The mound, as speckled as a grackle, was taking on a personality. It was no longer a nameless weathered irregularity in the soil. Here lay the last one who still remembered his birth, his first steps, his first words, here lay part of him, gone forever. “Ach,” Mischa cried aloud, sank to his knees and put his forehead on the rough pebble-studded soil. He felt the old man’s eyes on him, the way he had always peered at Mischa, at once questioning him, at once blaming him for the cruelties of time, of fate, his eyes so dark that the irises and the pupils blended into each other. Perhaps as if to make up for lost opportunities to have compassion for his son, Jakov would leap out of his grave, the burly man he had once been, and release his son to America. “Throw out the old, bring in the new,” Jakov might exclaim, “paint that dreary cave we lived in, and start your life! You’re a man now, at his prime!”
Mischa felt a light hand on his left shoulder. “Is that you?” He shuddered at the sound of a man’s voice. He looked up and tried to stand. His knees were wobbly from all that kneeling and he flopped a bit. The man reached down under his arm and helped him up.
The man’s eyes looked vaguely familiar but Mischa couldn’t place him. He was a stocky man, with something of Jakov’s build, a full seven or eight inches shorter that Mischa, with a few days’ growth of red- brown beard speckled with grey, and a black silky skullcap attached to his curly reddish brown hair with a large silver hair slide.
“My sister over there says she’s seen you around.”
“Your sister?” Mischa felt a bit dizzy. He flicked away the tiny clods of soil that had stuck to his knees and wiped his dirt-covered palms on the back of his trousers.
“Your sister?” Mischa repeated. On the soft ground of the cemetery, her movements made no sound as she approached, but her limp was still apparent. She wasn’t using a cane. Her large dark eyes looked right at him. Mischa thought he detected a hint of a smile, but he wasn’t sure and couldn’t bring himself to stare. She was wearing the same austere outfit that she had worn three days ago.
“Sadeh,” she said calmly, as if the pharmacist’s name were a greeting.
“Yes,” Mischa said, “good, good.” He wanted to do better but he couldn’t find the words to express how pleased he was to see her, to see her here, a spring breeze breaking into his loneliness, his sadness.
“By the way, I’m Dov, Dov Turansky and this is my sister Feige.”
“Mischa Granofsky,” Mischa responded.
“Your father?” Dov pointed to the spot where Mischa had been kneeling.
“You know?”
“We heard. From Evita, you know, the super’s wife.”
Mischa shook his head.
The thought that he had been talked about by strangers, let alone the woman who mopped the lobby floors, bothered him. He had little enough control over his life, he didn’t want people spying on him.
“Why?” Mischa asked.
“Don’t worry, she’s an old friend of ours, went to high school with my wife. Her husband does our repairs. And she knows we’re always looking for men like you, Jews who can come to our minyan.”
Sadeh’s words rang in Mischa’s ears. “A bit religious,” he’d said, “but nice.”
The three of them stood in silence for a while. All the dead seemed gathered around them, as if they were in a park or in the middle of a field observing some communal event.
“How about we say the prayers?” Dov said.
Getting his father into a pine box was about as far as he’d gone in Jewish observance: he avoided the young fellows in black hats who prowled around Kings Highway and who muttered “Are you Jewish?” as he walked by. Whatever he was was no one’s business. But right now the idea of praying with other people, even if it was only two, felt soothing, as if that might lift him beyond the anguish he still felt.
Mischa nodded.
Dov reached for his back pocket and took out a slim black book. He opened it and began to chant in a soft voice.
Ël moleh rachamim. . . “ Mischa looked at Feige. Her eyes were closed, her lips quivering slightly as if she were reciting the prayer to herself. He closed his eyes too, and let himself drift into the solemnity of the moment. Dov stopped, then continued.
“Yiskadal, veyis kadal, shemey rabbah.
Mischa had heard those words before, perhaps even said them at the funeral. And he’d met them years earlier when his mother recited them at the huge synagogue on Lermonsovski Street. Suddenly it didn’t matter that he mouthed sounds that were entirely alien to him, that he didn’t read them out of a book the way Dov did, they brought him closer to these strangers.
The prayers were over. Mischa opened his eyes. Dov and his sister were standing where he’d last seen them, a few feet away from each other, a few feet away from him.
“Our parents are buried over there.” Dov pointed to a row of pink and grey granite and marble gravestones a few dozen feet away.
“They died close to each other, ten, twelve years ago. We come here every few months.”
It somehow heartened Mischa to think he could be back here again.
Mischa nodded. His father was less alone now. In this place, the past could live forever. Both father and son might even feel the presence of Fanya, his mother, thousands of miles away in Prebrazhenskoe Cemetery.
Neither Dov nor his sister gave any indication that their time of prayer was over. Mischa wondered what was going to happen next. He looked at the woman whose name he didn’t want to say and wondered how he might start a conversation without her brother listening in. It would have to start right away with a basic question. But he could be a bit indirect. He might say for instance, “Does your husband sometimes come here with you?” Depending on her yes or no, things might be hard or easy.
“A stone?” he said after a while, “your parents have stone?”
“Yes, of course, over there, you see that big shiny boxy-looking thing?”
The monument Dov was pointing to was indeed massive, room enough, Mischa thought, for a family of five.
“I don’t know what to say, for father,” Mischa said, “Maybe you help?”
“Why don’t you come home with us now,” Dov said, “and we can work on it.”
Mischa shifted his weight, as if he were trying out his feet. Dov reached for his elbow. The two men began walking, gradually adjusting to each other’s pace. Dov’s sister walked behind them.
At the Ocean Avenue entrance, Mischa caught the guard’s eye. He wanted the guard to see the transformation in him, to observe that he had come in alone but was leaving with a friend, maybe even two if he counted the woman. A cemetery was the house of the dead, but it was also a place for the living.
When they reached Dov’s car—a shiny black sedan--Dov opened the passenger side for Mischa and ushered him into the front seat. The woman eased herself into the rear. She had to raise her long skirt a bit, to avoid tripping over it. Today Feige wore sturdy brown shoes, the blighted foot shod the same way as the intact one, vitality and infirmity in balance, giving her secure footing in soil, in rock, in mud, in the unadorned, in the timeless.
