Barbara Roush

            Schweikart's Haberdashery

 

            I saw my great-grandfather for the last time when I was nine years old.  It was Christmas afternoon.  The trees were bare and brittle.  Aunt Em’s eau de cologne mingled with the wet-fur smell of her coat.

            From my grandmother’s house in Queens we drove for over an hour, I in a permanent half-doze produced by the roll of the car, the heaviness of the roast beef in my stomach, and Aunt Em’s ether-perfume.  The windows were steamy with heat and alcoholic vapors; we were enclosed in a cozy box of post-dinner contentment.  Then, suddenly, there was my father, pulling up the emergency brake and turning off the motor; my mother, stepping out of the passenger side, her silly red feather quivering atop her black velvet hat; Aunt Em, laboriously making her way through the back door like a badger emerging from a tight hole; and my grandmother, sweeping me out with her hands the way she whisked minor pieces of fluff into the dustpan.

            I entered a world of boarded-up buildings, uncollected garbage, and men in formless coats sprawled on the sidewalk.  Red neon lights from Sal’s Bar winked at me from the shadow cast by the el; inside, a bleached blonde slouched on a stool, languidly blowing cigarette smoke into the already-thick air.

            “Disgraceful!” snorted Aunt Em, pulling her fur coat tighter.  “On Christmas Day, of all things!”

            My father drew my small arm through the other side of his herringbone sleeve, and we proceeded at a fast pace through the pathetic splotches of snow begrimed with sidewalk grit and dog piss.  We passed another bar, a pool hall, and a rundown pizza place.  Then, suddenly, amidst all this squalor, we found ourselves in front of a reminder of gentler times: a shop whose meager display of hats, ties and gloves was protected from the no-longer-existent sun by a piece of yellow plastic.  The plate glass window was bordered with sinuous etched flowers, and above it was a wooden sign with the barely decipherable words, Schweikart’s Haberdashery.

            The door opened even before we knocked, making us fall into Aunt Sue and her family, who had just arrived.  My cousin Meg, a snowball of energy in her white fake fur coat, rushed into my arms. “I got a monopoly set!  And patent leather shoes!  How ‘bout you?”

            Before I had time to answer, adults were moving us onwards through the dimly-lit cobwebby store, up the broad wooden staircase in the center and into the main room of the living quarters, a parlor with fat mauve armchairs squatting with antimacassars on their shoulders.  The wall was suffocating under yellowed photographs and samplers; an enormous radio reposed on a heavy wooden bureau that had lions’ claws for legs; the shiny silver horn of a victrola was the only object that didn’t appear coated with dust.

            We took off our coats.  Meg metamorphosed from snowball to king-sized Christmas-tree ornament, her red taffeta skirt and green Peter Pan blouse needing only a few sequins to finish her off.   As for myself, I emitted a vague aura of candy cane in my red-and-white puffy-sleeved dress.

            My great-uncle George limped in from some door, looking very serious.  He had dark bushy eyebrows that sprouted antennae like a snail’s.  He cleared his throat, indicated the way down the hall, and said in a sepulchral voice, "Only a few at a time, perhaps.  He tires easily."

            Various voices expressed the opinion that my parents and I should go first, since we had come all the way from Connecticut.  Meg, in awe of her two-week-older cousin from a distant northern state, insisted on accompanying us.  We all traipsed down the linoleum corridor to my great-grandfather’s room, as overstuffed as the parlor.  In the corner stood an incongruous garish Chinese screen in bright red and black lacquer.

            My knees trembled as I approached the gigantic oak bed.  Great-grandpa was the most magnificent human being I knew, with flowing snow-white hair, eagle nose, and high cheekbones.  He was also the oldest human being I knew:  ninety-three.  And he was the most awesome personage I had come across:  as a little boy he had touched Abraham Lincoln’s coffin. 

            His eyes were closed, his head propped by pillows three times the size of any we had at home.  I went over, stood by the side, and touched the fine, long veined fingers of the withered hand that rested on top of the sheet.   This was the hand that had stroked Abraham Lincoln’s coffin – Abraham Lincoln of the history books, who split wood in front of a log cabin, who wore a stovepipe hat and rode in a horse-drawn carriage, whose wife nagged, who was sad when his country had to go to war, who got a bullet in his back when he was sitting in a box somewhere.  I was a little confused about the man and even more confused about those times in which he had lived, but Great-grandpa’s touch assured me it all had been real.

            "We’d better let him rest.  We’ll come back in half an hour," said my mother.

            So we silently made our way back to the parlor, now bursting with more relatives.  I had to kiss everybody hello; the man with the thinning black hair had been drinking the same thing as my father, and the fuzzy woman with the shiny blue brooch had bad breath.

            Meg, still by my side like a Siamese twin, whispered, "We’re gonna hafta open a window, or get out of here, or something.  I can’t take it."

            I suggested sneaking down into the store while nobody was looking.  We effected our escape easily.  The adults were too busy looking serious and talking softly.

            We descended into the musty old store with its rows of waxed wooden drawers, its long brown counters, and its high ceiling supported by several burnished brown pillars of dimensions that would challenge Samson to test his strength.  On either side five tulip-shaped lights dangled from long wires, their feeble rays illuminating only their own clouded pink glass.

            I pulled out one of the drawers, coating my fingers with a layer of dust.  To my amazement, there was a piece of cardboard with five blue bow ties clipped to it.  I rummaged underneath, discovering another and yet another.  "Say!  There’s stuff in these drawers!"  I brandished a handful of colorful cardboards in the air.

            “Why, Mr. Schweikart,” said Meg, “how did you know I wanted a bow tie?”

            I handed over a black one with white polka dots; Meg clipped it to her Peter Pan collar.  I was opening other drawers now, uncovering hats, gloves, scarves and handkerchiefs of varying shapes, colors and textures.  Laboriously, formally, Meg and I went through the shopkeeper-client routine until she was fitted out with man-sized brown leather gloves, a shiny black belt, a red plaid scarf, an oak cane topped by a silver horse-head handle, and a hard black hat that had a tendency to settle on her nose.

            Then it was my turn to be customer; soon Meg had decked me out in a red satin bow tie, a tweed hat, fur-lined black gloves, a beige cashmere scarf and jet-black cane.  As I admired myself in the oval mirror, I couldn’t help kick up my heels; that was all Meg needed to show off the tap dancing lessons she’d been taking.  Soon we were the stars of a musical comedy, sashaying up the center aisle and round the pillars, holding our canes horizontally across our undeveloped chests.  Up and down we went, farther and farther into the dim recesses of the store, until we discovered a circular staircase at the end of the last counter – and that was too wonderful to resist.  Up and up we went, making as much noise as we could with our shoes and canes, each singing a different song at the top of her lungs:  “Oh what a beautiful mo-oo-rning …”; “It’s a lovely day to day …”  And then, suddenly, we popped out at the top behind a wide flat obstacle, and when I pushed it aside, I gasped: it was the ornate Chinese screen in Great-grandpa’s room.  And there was Great-grandpa in his bed, head turned towards the commotion, limpid blue eyes wide open, staring straight at us.

            I dropped my cane with a clatter.  Meg staggered backwards, saying, "Oh, we’re sooooo sorry," while the black hat fell onto her nose even more.

            But Great-grandpa was already beginning his loud guffaw:  " Ho ho ho ho."  It went on and on. 

Footsteps came running down the hall.  Soon the room was assaulted by relatives whose faces registered alarm.  As the guffaws continued, alarm changed to amazement, to twitchings at the corners of mouth.  Other laughs, less rasping, began to join in.

Meg and I looked at Great-grandpa’s brittle figure in near-convulsions, at the other giggling bodies at a respectful distance from the bed.  Then we looked at each other and realized that we were the source of it all.  Delirious with power, we took bows, made pirouettes. 

Great-grandpa started coughing.  Uncle George had to sit him up straight and slap him on the back.  Finally, the old man gasped, “That was wonderful.”  Then he laid his boney head against the voluminous white pillows, exhausted.

Aunt Em started in about how we shouldn’t have been messing up the store, but Uncle George cut her short.  He said we didn’t have to worry about putting things back in place.  Nobody knew what the inventory was.  Nobody came to the store anymore.  Hats and canes were no longer in fashion.

We went home soon after, walking out of the faded over-stuffed rooms, down the stately front stairs and out of the musty old store whose only customers were two little girls.

                                                         ********

Great-grandpa died a month later.  They didn’t wait long to demolish all the buildings on the block to make room for high-rise apartment buildings, leaving not one single stone from Schweikart’s Haberdashery, or for that matter, Sal’s Bar.

But continuity only appears to be broken.  I carry my great-grandfather’s touch with me.  Someday it will be up to me to pass it on to a little kid.  And if I’m lucky, maybe that little kid will give me a laugh in return.