Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon [83]
When James and I came in from the yard, Irv was already installed at the head of the table, nearest the fireplace, propped up on a sofa cushion. Philly, in a starched shirt with a button-down collar, his spiky hair slicked back with water, was sitting on Irv’s left. They were going through a shoe box filled with yarmulkes, reading the inscriptions and trying to recollect the various afternoons and ceremonies therein commemorated. I could hear the irritable whispering of Marie and Irene in the kitchen, each advising the other not to panic, but the two Warshaw daughters were nowhere to be seen. They were off together someplace, upstairs or outside, conferring, conspiring, helping each other dress. I felt a nasty little thrill of foreboding.
“Andrew … Ab … Andrew Abraham,” Irv said, holding a blotchy purplish beanie at arm’s length and frowning at the faded legend imprinted in the lining. “July … something, 1964. That’s your cousin Andy.”
“No kidding”
“Brother, I remember that one. It was up in Buffalo. Did they have gnats, God, it was awful.”
Philly grinned and waggled his eyebrows at us as we joined them at the table. “Gnats, huh?” He reached into the box and pulled out a crisp gold yarmulke. “Did they get up your nose? I hate that. Hey, dudes, how are you?”
“Hi,” James and I said, not quite simultaneously, and then the three of us all burst out laughing. Irv looked up, startled, trying to see what the joke was. He reached for a couple of yarmulkes and handed them to me and James.
“Up your nose,” he said, as he handed James a black yarmulke and me a royal blue one, studying our faces with his engineer’s eye. “In your mouth, in your ears, it was awful. Here you are, James. Grady.”
“Thanks,” said James. His face as he examined the little black skullcap was at once dubious and respectful, as if Irv had handed him a miraculous tortilla on which the face of a saint was said to have appeared.
“Phillip and Marie Warshaw,” Philly read from the inside of the gold yarmulke. “May 11, 1988.” He cocked his head to one side and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “I think I was at that one. Wasn’t that the one where the groom’s father and the bride’s uncle got into a huge argument about Arnold Shoneberger and were yelling so loud at each other that all the babies in the room started to cry?”
Resisting, somehow, the urge to correct Philly’s mispronunciation, Irv buried his chin in his hand and said nothing. He had worked all his life to deserve the reputation of a measured and reasoning person, and I knew it pained him to recall that devotion to his old hero had exposed him, unalterably, as the kind of man who would pick a fight with the in-laws at a wedding.
“Bat Mitzvah of—Osnat—Gleberman,” I said, with some difficulty, reading from the inside of my own little hat as I donned it. “February 17, 1979.”
“Osnat Gleberman?” said Philly. “Who the hell’s that?”
“I have no idea,” said Irv, with a shrug. “She must have been a friend of yours.”
“Hey, check it out,” James said, showing us the lining of his black yarmulke. “Mine says, ‘Dawidov Funeral Home.’”
“Oy, here,” said Irv, proffering the shoe box. “You can pick another one.”
“No, thanks,” said James, and he clamped the black beanie onto the back of his head.
“I never had any friends named Osnat,” said Philly indignantly, rhyming it, as had I, with the name of the little insect that ruined Andy Abraham’s Buffalo bar mitzvah.
“I believe it’s pronounced ‘oh-SNOT,’” said Irv, raising a pedantic finger, and the three of us burst out laughing again. “Shush!” He sat up a little in his chair, and pointed his upraised finger at the ceiling. “Here she comes.” There was a faint involuntary timbre of warning in his voice, the way you announce the arrival of a notorious brawler or an ill-tempered child or a woman in a very bad mood.
We shushed, following with our ears a soft, deliberate creaking