The Stork Club Read Online Free PDF

Shelly was a rehearsal pianist. As the crickets of summer throbbed and a yumpy-dump band from the cocktail lounge of the hotel across the way played "I Can't Get Started with You," the two of them exchanged horror stories about their respective Jewish mothers.
    "Mine had a plastic throw made to put over the chenille toilet-seat cover."
    "Mine couldn't get a lawn to grow in front of our house, so she cemented over the dirt, then painted the cement green."
    "Mine told me if I ever touched myself you-know-where, I'd eventually get locked in a crazy house and she'd never come to see me."
    That was when Shelly smiled and took in that kind of deep breath which means, Now I'm going to pull out all the stops and tell you the ultimate Jewish-mother story which you'll never be able to top. And Ruthie, who'd been looking for an excuse to do so all evening, leaned in a little closer.
    "Mine," he confided, "made the ultimate sacrifice for me not long ago when I fell madly in love with a creature so magnificent, there are no words to describe the temptation into which I was led by this—and I apologize in advance—gentile." He is so funny, Ruthie thought, and so cute. "This," Shelly went on, fueled by her obvious admiration, "was a lover par excellence, who whispered to me one night in the heat of passion, 'If you really love me, you'll go and cut your mother's heart out and bring it to me.' "
    Ruthie giggled, and Shelly tried to look serious. "Naturally," he continued, "I did what any red-blooded American boy would do under the circumstances. I ran home, grabbed the old bag, and not only cut her heart out, but to add insult to injury, I took a Reed and Barton platter out of the silver closet and put the quivering mass right on it. Without a doily.'' Ruthie would always remember the way the moonlight made it appear as if there were frost on the top of his curly brown hair and the way those hazel eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses were so alive with glee.
    "To say that I hurried back to my beloved's house would be a gross understatement. Unfortunately, blinded by my passion, I didn't notice a branch which lay across the sidewalk in my path, and sure enough the branch caught my foot, my ankle turned, and as I tripped and fell, the heart flew from the tray and landed in the street in a bloody, pulsating pile."
    "No!" Ruthie said, grinning as she jumped into the game, loving the delight she saw in his face when she did.
    "And as I lifted myself to my feet, my mother's heart spoke to me."
    "Really?'' Ruthie asked, knowing the punch line was coming, and hoping she was offering the proper straight line. "What did it say?"
    "It said," Shelly answered, taking a deep breath before he went on, " 'Did you hurt yourself, honey?' "
    No one had ever told a joke that hit home so well with Ruthie, who let out a laugh of recognition, and Shelly laughed with her. So hard he had to take off his glasses and wipe away a tear from the outside corner of his left eye. There are very few things that make two people feel closer than laughing together, but just at the moment when it was clear that Ruthie and Shelly were feeling that closeness, Shelly looked at his watch.
    "It's late," he said, patting Ruthie's hand. "I've got to go."
    Later, in her cubicle of a hotel room, by the light of a bare bulb in a wall socket, Ruthie changed out of her overalls, dabbed some dots of Clearasil on the eruptions here and there on her face, slipped on her Pittsburgh Steelers nightshirt, and fell onto her bed. Then she reached into the bedside-table drawer for her little spiral notebook, in which she made a list of possible bridesmaids who would precede her down the aisle when she married Shelly Milton.
    "What's the thinnest book in the world?" Shelly asked the next night.
    "
Jewish Circus Performers
," Ruthie answered, having no idea where she got that answer. It had just popped into her head. "What's wrong?" she asked him. "You don't remember Shirley the Human Cannonball?"
    "I