excerpt from Assimilation

1.

Summer of Love

            I dashed out the back door, through a neighbor’s yard and ran full throttle for a block and a half.  I hadn’t stayed long enough to find out what the Millers planned to do. Exhaust poured out of the tailpipe of our Cutlass as it backed down our drive. I knew on a hot summer night the windows were rolled down. I dashed to the passenger door, lifted the lock and jumped in.

“No, Avi,” Dad said. “You stay here with your mother.”

“Sorry, Dad,” I said. “No disrespect, but you made me your employee and I need to go with you to check on the store.”

“Okay, you win. Just go tell your mother you’re with me, so she doesn’t worry.”

I started to grab the door handle but stopped. If I got out of the car he would take off without me. I sat still.

“All right, suit yourself,” Dad said.

We saw few cars on Capitol Drive and Appleton Avenue. The streets of Milwaukee are often empty on a Sunday night. That changed when we turned and headed east. Squad cars four deep blocked traffic coming from the west as we approached on Center Street.

“Why don’t we go up to Burleigh and see if we can get through from the north?” I said.

“I’m sure we’ll get through,” Dad said. As one of the officers checked the driver in front of us, I spotted a detective who’d been to our store a number of times to check for stolen merchandise. I pointed him out to my father who opened his door, stepped out and called his name.

“Hey, get back in your car,” the officer in front of us said.

“It’s all right,” the other officer said as he pointed to our car. “I’ll take care of that one.”

While he checked the license of the driver next to us and investigated why he was in the area, Dad asked, “Where’s Cal?”

“I left him at Miller’s,” I said.

“Good. He shouldn’t be down here. Some well-meaning cop might mistake him for one of those rabble-rousers and beat the daylights out of him. It’s not his fault he’s the wrong color.”

“What’s the right color?” I said.

“Don’t start with me, Avi,” Dad said. “You know what I mean.”

My parents discussed the correct amount of pigmentation on more than one occasion. My mother said it wasn’t necessary to be as light as Harry Belafonte but there was a distinct disadvantage to being as dark as Sidney Poitier. “People just want to fit in,” she said.

A couple hours ago, I was sitting on the floor with Cal. We sat on either side of Miller, leaning our backs against his parents’ new faux leather sofa. A rerun of the The Ed Sullivan Show that featured the Rolling Stonesflickered on the twenty-five-inch screen. Their appearance sparked a debate about whether Mick’s recent arrest for possession would break up the group. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,which followed, produced a similar disagreement. We argued whether Tommy and Dicky or Rowan and Martin from Laugh Inwere more relevant.

“Who cares?” Cal said. “What matters is who’s funnier?”

Local news was boring, but when they covered the weekend events in California our eyes lit up. We followed Jimi’s fingers as they danced up and down the neck of his guitar pinching metal strings against frets. The motion caused his amplifier to squeal with the same excitement exhibited by teenage girls in bikini tops who bounced up and down in front of a stage somewhere near San Francisco. As the guy who spelled Jimmy with four letters kneeled in front of his burning sacrificial guitar and news cameras captured smiling faces with flowers in their hair we knew there was something on which the three of us agreed. It was the Summer of Love.

“That’s it,” Miller said. He popped up at the commercial break and announced, “We’re going to San Fran.”

“But…” I said.

“No buts,” Miller said. “It’s over. She dumped you. It’s time to move on.”

It was true. There was no more Dana and Avi. Unlike my other romances, this one lasted more than a few weeks. Nine weeks, three days, two hours and thirty-seven minutes, if you start at our first kiss. But who’s counting?

She was the first to put her tongue in my mouth. Miller said she, “Craved my bod.” Cal said, “You’re going to do it.” We never did.

We did attend an Ahmad Jamal concert. Dana said she’d read that true jazz fans don’t clap or cheer. When the pianist finished she closed her eyes and nodded her head.

A fervent believer in the anti-war movement, she shocked me when she wanted to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces. “Vietnam is a sham. It’s a civil war. The United States has no business interfering,” she said.  “Israel is fighting for its survival.” Apparently, so was I.  The war ended in six days, our relationship two days later. It was nothing I said or did. She discovered she was “fickle.”

I decided to be fickle with Miller’s cute cousin from Chicago at Milwaukee’s big Fourth of July celebration. Miller left us on the hill, while he took his date to a secluded spot in the park. It was a complete disaster. Not only did his cousin not utter a single o-o-o-h or a-a-a-h during the pyrotechnics, she said only three words the entire night: “Yes, no and thank you,”.

To make matters worse, Dana showed up with Holmes High’s biggest nebbish. “Hey Avi. How you doing?” he said. Guess he forgot Dana and I dated for three months. It was bad enough she was fickle, but did she have to be fickle with such a nebbish? Nebbish is a Yiddish term for a helpless, hapless loser.

As we continued to wait for the officer to reach us, I recalled Cal saying, “I can’t go. My dad gets back Tuesday.” Cal said.

“Shit,” Miller said, “I forgot all about that.”

It was true. Unlike a draftee or an enlisted soldier who served a regular six-month or year tour of duty, Cal’s father served varying lengths of time overseas. He was a lieutenant colonel and served under Westmoreland in Vietnam. We never knew when Cal’s dad was coming home next or how long he’d stay.

“I thought we agreed to wait until after graduation,” I said.

“You heard the man. It’s the Summer of Love,” Miller said. “We don’t know if the hippies will be in Frisco next year.”

Instead of responding, my eyes shifted to Cal whose mouth hung open as he pointed to the television. Miller and I both turned to look.

“Isn’t that your father’s store?” Cal said.

We nodded. Both of our fathers owned stores on Third Street north of downtown. The plumbing supply store that appeared engulfed in flames on the screen belonged to Miller’s father. I didn’t wait to see if our store was on the news but left without a word and that’s how I ended up at the roadblock with Dad.

The officer advised us to approach our store by using the alley behind it. Another detective used his radio to make sure the area was secure before he let us through the police barricade.

Dad grabbed a flashlight and we entered the store from the rear. We’d always entered from the front because the rear door was designed as an emergency exit. I looked out the front window at the fire trucks and squad cars filling the street. Lights swirled against the dark walls and shards of broken glass on the floor. I realized this was an emergency.

“Guess we’re one of the lucky ones,” Dad said. He used his flashlight to step around the glittering fragments. “From what I heard at the roadblock it sounded like most of the Molotov action took place to the south of us.”

“Can we check on Miller’s?” I asked. Their store was south of ours.

“Not tonight,” Dad said, “It’s still dangerous out there. We’ll come back in the morning. You can help me pick up the glass and board up the window. Once that’s done you can check on your friend while I go through the inventory.”

We were unable to return to the store the next day because the mayor issued a curfew and the governor called up the National Guard to restore order. Besides the convoy of young soldiers, burning buildings, fire trucks, squad cars and the sound of gunfire, the scene on Monday wasn’t much different than Sunday night. A few people were shot and reports of several fatalities awaited confirmation.

Around four o’clock the mayor lifted the curfew for a couple hours. Dad was on the phone finding out when it might be safe enough to clean up the damage and get back to work. Mom sent me to the grocery store with a list. On my way, I stopped at Miller’s to see how he was doing. His mother wrote out a list and sent him with me to the store. “You can talk while you’re doing something productive,” she said.

The parking lot was full, so I found a place on the street. All shopping carts were taken. One of the clerks pointed to a stack of baskets. Rather than going down the list we decided to head down one aisle and grab whatever was on the list. There wasn’t any white bread left. Miller and I stuffed loaves of whole wheat in our baskets even though we knew our fathers hated it.

If it wasn’t bad enough the produce shelves were almost empty, an old lady with an overflowing cart reached over my shoulder to pull the last head of lettuce out of my hand. Miller said I should have elbowed her in the stomach and taken it back. I decided if she was that desperate it was better she have it.

Once our baskets were full of bread, produce, cereal, pasta, spaghetti sauce and frozen dinners we stood in a long checkout line. People kept streaming into the store. Many headed to the next store when they discovered the scarce inventory. As I counted the customers in our line I noticed the cashier checking groceries two rows away. Miller’s head was already nodding when I asked, “Isn’t that Ricardo’s girlfriend?”

“Ex-girlfriend,” Miller said. “He broke up with her about the same time Dana broke up with you. But unlike you, he’s already got a new girlfriend.”

“Really?” I said, “I didn’t know…”

“Here,” Miller said. He handed me his basket even though I already had trouble carrying one. “I’ll go say ‘hi,’ for you.”

Before I could tell him that we’d never met, he had picked his way through the lines to a place behind her register. I watched as he talked to her backside. She appeared to be responding. Then, she looked my way. My arms strained under the weight of two baskets. I couldn’t make any sort of meaningful gesture. I did the only thing I could. I smiled.

“We’re meeting her and her friend at the Parlor tomorrow night,” Miller said as he took his basket back.

“What if the curfew is still on?” I asked.

“Then, we’ll get together on Wednesday,” Miller said.

“But what if we don’t hit it off?” I said.

“Then you’ll take the friend and I’ll take Cassie.”

“Oh, I see.” I nodded as if I believed him.

“Christ, Avi. You’ve got to stop worrying. You want something to worry about. Worry about how much your Dad’s insurance premiums are going to rise and how his customers are going to act after this mess settles down. My dad’s talking about keeping a gun at the store.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Wish I was.”  He smiled at a girl in the next line. “But girls. Girls are easy. They like you.” He put his free hand on my chest and gave me a light push toward the girl. “Forget about the one that got away. There’s lots of fish in that sea. You need to loosen up, man.”

On the drive home, Miller told me his father’s store suffered only a minimal amount of fire damage. Some floor models were destroyed and a few faucets had been looted, but most of the inventory in the rear remained unharmed. He’d talked to Cal, who told him his mother insisted he stay in the house until his father came home on Tuesday.

It occurred to me that over the past twenty-four hours the opportunity to go to San Francisco for the Summer of Love went from unlikely to zero. Were we to go, whether in the next few weeks or next year, I was glad it was with Miller. He was right. I needed to loosen up, get over Dana and move on.

 

2.

Avi Meets Cassie

            Sweat dripped from my forehead into my eyes as I pounded nails into the half-inch plywood used to board up the space where the plate glass window used to be. We spent the entire morning shoveling large piles of shattered glass off the floor. Then, we swept the finer fragments and dust before dumping it in the dumpster. Dad borrowed a skill saw from the Millers to cut the board to size and we took turns driving the eight-inch nails into the frame.

“We’re done with the saw,” Dad said when Miller came to the door.

“That’s all right, Mr. Feinberg,” Miller said, “Dad said you can go ahead and keep it. He doesn’t need it. But that’s not why I’m here.”

“So, why are you here, Son?” Dad asked using the patriarchal nomenclature because he knew even though Miller’s parents called him Al and Zack, he hated those almost as much as his given name, Aloicious Zachariah. My father’s generation never called anyone by their surname unless they put Mr. or Mrs. in front of it or served with the person in World War II.

“Avi and I are meeting a couple of young ladies at the Parlor at six,” Miller said.

“Ricardo’s old girlfriend is a nice young lady?” Dad asked.

“Yes sir,” Miller said. “There’s no hard feelings. Ricardo broke up with Cassie, not the other way around.”

“I see,” Dad said, “and this Cassie, you think she likes my Avi?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Miller said, “but I think we’re going to find out.”

“Well, you better hurry along,” Dad said turning in my direction. “Be sure to wash behind your ears,” he patted the back of my head chuckling over his joke. “I’ll finish up here,” he smiled. “Tell your mother I’ll be home by eight, she shouldn’t worry.” He often tacked those three words onto messages he sent with me as if they had some magic power to relieve her anxiety.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“And you,” he said, returning to Miller. “Mr. Fancy Shmancy sports car man. You take it easy in that hotrod of yours.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Feinberg,” Miller said. “No going over the speed limit and nothing over thirty-five hundred r.p.m.”

A few blocks from the store Miller shifted into fourth gear causing the engine to lumber at twenty-five miles per hour. People gawked as the purple Plymouth Barracuda with oversized tires and fiberglass spoiler changed its tune from a strutting tenor to a mellow baritone. As envious as I was of Miller, whose grandfather gave him the car on his sixteenth birthday, I knew I was only a few months and a couple hundred dollars away from buying my Mustang.

Before Mom could pin me in a corner for a damage assessment, I catapulted myself into a steamy shower. I left the exhaust fan running while I threw on a white collar and cuffed flower print shirt, white Levis and penny loafers. Inside the medicine cabinet, I pushed past Jade East, a favorite of the Zen-minded Dana, to old reliable English Leather. A mild splash to build enough confidence to sail through the stream of obligatory questions a mother tosses her son as he sets out into the enchanting world of feminine allure and entrapment.

“No, she doesn’t go to Holmes,” I said as I came downstairs using a preemptive strike to avoid being put on the defensive. “I have no idea what her parents do. I’ll fill you in on the details if you’re up when I get home or tomorrow.”

“It’s not…” Mom said.

“I don’t even know if she likes me,” I said.

“You won’t…”

“Of course not,” I said, “it’s bad enough we have to work there. We’re just going over to the Parlor.” The Pizza Parlor was a popular hangout of not only kids from Holmes, but Jefferson, where Cassie went, and other neighboring schools.

“Have fun, Avi,” Mom said, which sounded good to an indiscriminate ear but to an obedient son screamed “be careful” an inch below the surface.

“Thanks, Mom,” I kissed her on the cheek before dashing out the front door into the rumbling purple ‘Cuda.

Cassie and her friend stood in front of the rear door the delivery guys used as we pulled into the parking lot. They walked over to the car as soon as we pulled into a space.

“Why didn’t you wait in your car?” I asked as we got out.

“Hard to do when you don’t have a car,” the friend said.

“Robbie’s mom dropped us off,” Cassie said. Another look at the auburn-haired friend made me realize I knew her from Hebrew school. Roberta Herschensohn translated, conjugated and interpreted Hebrew better than anyone else in the class and she was two years younger than the rest of us.

“We’re freshmen,” Robbie said.

“Sophomores,” Cassie said, “at least in the fall we will be.”

“Right, right,” Miller said, “we’ll be seniors.”

“Pizza?” I said. It worked. Like magic everyone forgot about how they came and proceeded to the front entrance. Pete Stevenson, whose father owned the Parlor, stood behind the counter pounding a ball of dough into a flat circle that he floured and tossed in the air. On the third and final toss, he looked my way.

“I’m going to go say hi to Pete,” I said.

“You know Pete Stevenson?” Cassie said with a tone of utter amazement.

“We serve on a number of committees at Holmes and are on the same basketball team at the JCC,” I said. The Jewish Community Center was where I first recall seeing Cassie. The few times I saw her with Ricardo, his body builder physique made her appear of average stature, but standing next to her in the lobby of the restaurant she seemed statuesque. I excused myself several times as I picked my way through the other patrons waiting for a table.

“Isn’t that Ricardo’s girlfriend you’re with?” Pete asked as he ladled sauce onto the dough before grabbing a stack of cheese slices.

“Ex-girlfriend,” I said.

“Really, I didn’t know they broke up.”

“A couple weeks. He’s already moved on. I guess he’s going with Barb Nowitzke.”

“Nowi? Really? Doesn’t seem his type.” He finished the lines of cheese and started tearing pieces of sausage from a glob he squeezed out of a plastic tube. He placed them on top of the cheese. “He was just in here.”

“Who was? Ricardo?”

“Yeah, he was filthy,” Pete said. “Told me he’d spent the day with Miller and his dad cleaning up their store.”

“I know,” I said gesturing with my head to where Miller was standing with the two girls. “I was down there.”

“Did your dad’s store get torched?”

“No, just a lot of broken glass and a few display models missing. All the customers’ stuff was in the back and from the looks of things they didn’t go in there.”

“The city will never be the same,” Pete said. He sprinkled chopped onions over the cheese and sausage.

“That’s for sure,” I said. He opened the metal door and grabbed the long-handled pizza shovel. As he placed the orb in the oven Miller signaled me that our table was ready. I followed him and the girls to a booth in the back corner.

Along the way, I thought I heard some phrases I wasn’t used to hearing. The muted voices said, “What are they doing here?” “They’re the ones causing all the trouble.” “Do they think they’re better than the rest?”

When we sat down, I looked at Miller. From his expression, it was obvious he heard the same remarks. He craned his neck in the direction of a table where our mutual friend sat with his family.

“I’m sorry, girls,” Miller said, “but a friend of mine is sitting over there and I really need to say hello.”

Without waiting for a response, Miller got up. I turned to Cassie. “Do you mind if I go with him?” I said, “He’s a friend of mine, too.”

“Sure,” she said with a shrug.

“Good to see you boys,” Colonel Menlo said. He stood up and extended his huge hand to each of us. His soft handsome features reminded me of Mohammed Ali, the fighter the colonel disapproved of because of his refusal to serve in the military on religious grounds. “Would you like to join us?”

“We’d love to,” Miller said, “but we’re not alone.” He used his head again to point out our companions in the booth.

“Oh, I see,” The Colonel said taking his seat, “then by all means carry on.”

“Thank you, sir,” Miller said.

“But you will come by the house. We’re having Calvin and his sister keep a low profile, but we hope you’ll stop by in the next day or two.”

“Count on it,” Miller said.

“For sure,” I said as I nodded to Calvin, his mother and little sister before returning to our booth. I made a conscious effort to keep my eyes on Cassie and ignore the chatter around me.

“You know them?” she asked.

“Since third grade,” I said.

“Calvin played Little League with us,” Miller said.

“Best glove on the team,” I said.

“The traitor,” Miller said.

“He’s a traitor?” Robbie said, “What did he do?”

“He went out for track,” I said.

“That makes him a traitor?” Robbie said.

“We get to high school, and he’s too good to play baseball,” Miller said.

“Set a school record in the hundred,” I said looking over at Calvin, who smiled back at me. “He wants to break the city record next year.”

Our waitress came over to take our order. While Miller explained how the crust needed to be both thick and crispy, I watched the Menlos leave. They knew we talked about them. No doubt they were aware other patrons talked about them, but in quite a different way. Nothing in the way they conducted themselves provoked such disdain. It gnawed at my stomach that people threw the Menlos in with a bunch of rioters and looters just because they shared the same skin color. My nausea increased with the realization someone might mistake me for one of these narrow-minded people because I shared their skin color.

#

 

The backseat of a Plymouth Barracuda shows no mercy to a girl with long legs, but Cassie smiled and held my hand in hers as she told me how her mother died without warning on a spring evening two years ago. Her father, who disappeared when she was six, turned up last month in a prison in his native Bulgaria as the result of an investigation by a local detective into an unrelated case. She had no interest in ever seeing him again. Although all we did in the backseat was talk there was more going on than just words.

For the past two years, Cassie and her sister shared a first-floor bedroom at a children’s group home. Seven other children lived in the three bedrooms on the second floor. As we stood on the screened-in porch she put her arms around my neck and gave me a kiss. Back in the backseat of the ‘Cuda it dawned on me that her tongue found its way into my mouth. I wondered if she kissed Ricardo that way, but decided it was a question I really didn’t want answered.

In between the story of how she came to live in the group home and our kiss goodnight we made plans to see a movie on Saturday.