Jew Store by Stella Suberman

upstairs and only needed to have the benches taken out to make my father “mighty proud.” Tucker said to him, “As I say, you Jews are so . . .”
    Yes, yes, my father knew all about how Jews were so this and so that: so smart, so energetic, so whatever. This man’s choice had been “enterprising.” My father had finally gotten it into his head that when people said these things what they meant was that Jews were different, and he had no doubt that among themselves there was an understanding that Jews were “not like you and me.” That people thought he was different didn’t bother him so much. People were all different in one way or another, and if some didn’t like in what way he was different, well, what could he do about it?
    But for dealing with this man Tucker, he plucked an old Jewish saying from his bag of old Jewish sayings—one having to do with not spitting in the well you might have to drink from later—and kept these thoughts to himself. Out loud he wondered if those two listings were all Tucker had.
    From the way Tucker shifted around, my father knew a game plan was already operating, one in which this son of a bitch with the teeth was being coached by the
momzer
with the sweaty face. For how could a man call himself a realtor (which my father pronounced “relator” like everybody else in town) and have only these preposterous listings? No, something was going on here.
    My father figured it was time to counter. He told Tucker he’d think it over, that he’d come in in a few days to have another talk.
    Two days later he once more meandered up and down FirstStreet. The day was hot, without hint of breeze. Under his woollen coat, my father’s armpits pooled with sweat, and wet patches showed dark along his hatband. He went into Redfearn’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain and, under a ceiling fan “trying its best to quit altogether,” as my father described it, bought some Camels and attempted to engage the clerk in conversation.
    The clerk stood behind boxes of cough medicines stacked chest high on the counter. Above him, on a horizontal piece of bare wood resting on rickety posts, were some red rubber hot-water bottles. The clerk bent his head and, through the narrowed opening, squinted up at my father. “What’s that you say?”
    My father repeated that there wouldn’t be many calls for hot-water bottles at that time of year. There being no rejoinder, my father said uncomfortably to the clerk, “You know . . . it being so hot, uh, and all that.”
    The clerk was uninterested. Summer, winter, didn’t mean “diddly” to him, and, anyway, he didn’t go in for doing something different “every time the weatherman farts.” (Whenever a memory called for words my father judged unsuitable, he added an automatic, “Excuse me, children,” and decades later he was still adding it.) The drugstore clerk, having delivered himself of this sentiment, went back to washing glasses at the fountain.
    My father went out. To waste some more time, he crossed the street and put himself on view in front of Spivey’s Furniture Store, where he feigned a fascination with the window display. There was in fact no display, only haphazard heaps of furniture called “Grand Rapids,” a generic term for the kind of cheap, mass-produced stuff pioneered in that Michigan city. A jungle, my father thought. It was obvious that the guy had to get rid of some trees or find a new clearing. Was it possible he had in mind a new location?
    Before he knew it, he had opened the door. A bell tinkled. Then he was squeezing past overstuffed chairs to a path leadingto a desk. Behind the rolltop sat a man with gold-rimmed spectacles on a nose “only a bone,” as my father said.
    My father held out his hand and gave his name. The man responded with neither hand nor name but with a look that my father always