The Ecstasy and the Agony Part 2 -- Bitter Rice

The Ecstasy and the Agony

Part 2 -- Bitter Rice

by Harry Buschman

Phil Miller, all eighteen years of him, and with six months to go until high school graduation, was getting married––and I needed a suit. You can't be a best man without a suit. I was seventeen without a dime to my name, and the only way I was going to get a suit was to ask my old man for the money.

"What do you need a suit for? You're seventeen years old, you don't need a suit. I don't own a suit myself, and I sure ain't goin' to shell out no $18.50 for a suit for you if I don't have one. You look fine just the way you are."

I expected that, and I dreaded having to explain why I needed a suit. "I'm going to be a best man, Pa." That was the pure unvarnished truth. I should have broken the news more gently, but I had not yet reached the age of diplomacy. Diplomacy would have been wasted on my father anyway, he was a blunt man and he always knew when he was being suckered.

After all, it wasn't as though I had to tell him I was going to be a groom. When I thought how close I came to being one it made my blood run cold.

I’m sure it happened that Saturday night under the boardwalk in front of Steeplechase. Phil, the smart one, the one who knew all the answers. Phil, at the age of eighteen was going to be a father. There he was, a senior caught in the middle of the most profound depression the world had ever known was marrying Pearl Elefant, a girl everyone knew was a 'good sport'.

"Who do you know's gettin' married?" My father asked.

"Phil Miller, Pop, he's a senior .... he's been here once or twice."

"Is he that skinny blond kid with the glasses?"

My mother was more understanding .... "It's his best friend, Fred .... besides it's time he had a suit."

My father had a habit of thinking and talking at the same time, and the talking part of him would often get ahead of the thinking part. He reminded me a lot of my old friend Ernie, whenever Ernie used to talk ahead of himself, his mother would stop him, take him by both shoulders and say, "Ernest .... first you'll think, then you'll talk." My father's lips were moving and I could tell his thinking processes were doing all they could to catch up to where his mouth was.

"Too young to be gettin' married .... kid in high school .... where they gonna live .... how they're gonna get along?"

Mother knew the story .... "it's to give the baby a name, Fred."

"What baby? .... they ain't married yet .... how can there be a baby?" Then his mind finally overtook his mouth and all he could say was, "Jesus Christ!"

He lit up his dead cigar and eyed me warily, "That ever happens to you, I'll .... I'll .... " But he had never made plans for what he might do if that ever happened to me, so he and his voice trailed off to the bedroom where I knew he kept an old black leather wallet with the house money.

He came out again and mumbled .... "Come on, let's get a suit, we'll have it cut full, maybe I can wear it too."

Phil and Pearl beat the stork by seven months, and it really wasn't much of a wedding. They were married by a impassive Priest in the business end of the vestry behind the altar where he kept the wine and the wafers. Other than the few grains of rice that were thrown at them at the side door there was no reception. It was a cold late autumn afternoon and I remember the rice being gritty on the sidewalk under my feet. I wiped them in the soft grass before walking home alone. I thought to myself this was one attraction Steeplechase never mentioned. Phil and Pearl drove off to a hotel in Atlantic City in his father's De Soto for the weekend. Phil was working part time now and he had to be back in school Monday morning.

A cold autumn weekend in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I wondered how they would spend the time ... they were back early Sunday afternoon.

For the duration at least, they were going to stay with Pearl's mother, father and two sisters above Esposito's candy store. Pearl's father got Phil an afternoon job as a loader at the Wonder Bread bakery with a chance of getting a truck route for himself some day. He was pretty excited about that. I wondered why, it didn't look like much of a future to me.

I soon lost track of Phil and Pearl. Phil had no time for fooling around now, and Pearl, in her confinement, (a polite word we used for pregnancy in those days) rarely left the house. The baby was still-born, (another polite word we used for an infant born dead). My father's words, ("If that ever happens to you .... I'll .... I'll") kept coming back to me, I could hear them as clearly as if I'd said them to myself.

Another friend gone. Yesterday's friendships seemed so unbreakable, like the monoliths on Easter Island; today's were fragile, quickly terminated and they left a bitter taste. I was growing up and the world was closing in on me. It was 1937 and people said there was a war coming, a big one––bigger than the one my father fought in. What would I do with my life after high school, go on to college? Join the army? Both? Would there ever be another Steeplechase?

Steeplechase was a door to a joyful world that had opened a crack for a moment. The music and the laughter filtered through, then it closed again forever.

My father was getting gray now and there was a stoop to his shoulders I hadn't noticed before. He talked only about the old days––how things used to be back in Brooklyn when he was young. He was only forty. He had more than fifty years to live and he would spend them trying to remember how good things used to be. In time his memory would fail him, exhausted perhaps from chasing his mouth for so many years and he would remember nothing .... not even me.

©Harry Buschman