Outside of a Dog Read Online Free PDF Page A

the summer holidays in Huntington, Long Island, in her parents’ bungalow in Harbor Heights Park, a community of modest dwellings that served as summer
retreats for New Yorkers. The bungalow was a ten-minute walk – you could pick blackberries on the way – from Brown’s Beach, with its unreliable seaweed-stuffed tides, the oily
surface of the water reflecting the sun in brilliant colours. The sand was mucky and unappealing, but there was a small snack bar where you could buy cream soda or root beer, and hotdogs with yummy
green relish gone crusty in the heat. I wasn’t allowed in the water for an hour after my lunch, or I would get cramps and drown. But lots of other kids were allowed in the water right away, I
observed to Granny Pearl, and they didn’t drown. She sniffed – her usual form of disapprobation or rebuttal – looked at her watch, and said, ‘ One hour !’
    The bungalow was entirely without soundproofing, and it was easy to overhear conversations, the everyday intimacies of belching and arguing. There were only two bedrooms. Mom slept on the porch
on a sofa-bed, in which dad would join her when he finally arrived to spend a couple of weeks, while Ruthie and I shared a room and bed next to the kitchen. Its great advantage was that the wall
that separated it from the kitchen terminated – for no obvious reason – some eighteen inches short of the ceiling. If I stood on the bedstead I could just peer over, and see what was
going on. Ruthie was too short, so I sent back reports.
    ‘Granny’s in there,’ I would whisper.
    ‘What’s she doing?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    Ricky! Ruthie! Will you go to sleep right now!
    There was a tiny third room, hardly more than a cupboard, where die schwarz would sleep. Each summer a young coloured woman, supplied by an agency in New York City, would spend the summer
in the bungalow, tidying, cleaning and washing up. Granny was frequently exasperated with the help, unsure whether they made life easier or harder. What the poor girls made of it is almost
impossible to imagine, and none of us even tried to. The demands of running a kosher kitchen were incomprehensibly arcane to most of them. ‘ No , no ! You don’t serve the
butter when there is meat on the table . And you don’t use these dishes with the meat . How many times do I have to tell you ?’
    An imposing woman grown plump in later life, granny had a noble bosom and a bottom that stuck out, a rolled mop of grey hair and an anxiously inquisitive expression on her round powdered face
that suggested that the worst was yet to come. My major encounters with her were about food: did I finish my lunch? Had I eaten too much fruit, or too many cookies? Taken all of those candies? Was
I a little feverish? Had I done a BM? The spectre of the enema bag loomed. I was fine . In tacit acknowledgement of her obsession with anal functioning, my girl cousins, sister and I would
periodically inspect each other’s bottoms as we ducked behind a bush or tree. ‘Hey!’ Uncle Freddie would yell over to us, ‘if you want to show cookies go somewhere
else!’ We did. Showing cookies was better, even, than eating them.
    I avoided Granny Pearl as best I could. Unlike Poppa Norman she knew nothing of baseball, or making things in the garage workshop, or polishing the Caddy. I adored being with him, watching and
helping, or playing ‘catched’um-missed’um’ with a softball in the garden. He’d played semi-pro baseball, and had a catcher’s stocky body, with a thick and hairy
torso, short legs, low centre of gravity. He loved Friday nights, shedding his elegant suit and colourful tie when he got to Huntington, spending the weekend puttering round the bungalow. He was
great value in short spurts, but tired of the company of children quickly. You could make money out of that. ‘First one to fall asleep gets a nickel!’ he’d offer. Even in the
afternoon I was happy to feign sleep, though I quickly raised the ante to