My Dinner With Alvin

Alvin Weinstein was a Jew who owned a fabric company headquartered in Manhattan. He was also the person I called dad. He and Joan adopted me as an infant and flew me from Chicago to their home on Long Island. They changed my name to Marc. I was never very happy about it. What nine-month-old enjoys air travel?

This story takes place one day in what I think was 1980. I don’t remember all that much about it. It’s vivid but in a way that doesn’t yield much detail.

I’ll be upfront about this. Thinking about my “father” is not huge fun. If I’m going to write about him I’d rather get it over with. So I’m not going to tell this story like a documentary. I’ll tell it like a movie — take whatever liberties amuse me. Might as well get some stuff off my chest while I’m here.

I was just out of college, for which, I should point out, he paid the tuition. Food and rent were on me. And I was still living up near Bard, adding to my résumé: janitor, dishwasher, factory worker, kitchen countertop fabricator. That high-paying kind of stuff.

I was rather lax about keeping in touch with old Alvin. Not that I shunned him entirely. So when he called I happened to mention I was in the city that day, visiting “friends” in the Village. He said I ought to come uptown and he’d buy me lunch. I wasn’t going to turn down a decent meal, so I took the subway up.

I don’t remember the name of the restaurant. That sort of place … white tablecloths, old wood, serious men eating serious lunches. Let’s say Keen’s on 36th Street. He would have liked it.

He was already there when I arrived, waiting at the maître d’ stand. “Marc!” … with the enthusiasm of a man who had decided to be enthusiastic. His hand brushed my elbow as we were shown to our seats.

I don’t remember the order of any of this. He would have asked the usual questions. Work … I was running a line-o-type machine at Belding Typesetting. Where was I living … renting a place in Tivoli with Vicki. How long had we been together. Normal stuff. But he was circling the old critiques.

He told me to order the sole. I ordered a burger. He pointed out that I could get a burger anywhere … at least get a steak. I said I felt like a burger. And a beer. I couldn’t say which annoyed him more.

We talked banalities while we waited for the food. I made an effort to ask about his company. I knew there was some drama … his brother, my uncle Frank. It wasn’t just that Frank was gay. They were fighting over control of the company they’d inherited from my grandfather Max. He declined to mention any of that. But I knew. The friend I was visiting was his secretary. I declined to mention any of that.

I sighed and he grunted. He went back to his sole; I took a long pull on my beer. A waiter drifted over and refilled his water glass.

“Is everything satisfactory, sir?”

We both looked up and gave him blank looks. Alvin nodded. That seemed to settle it. Everything was satisfactory. Then he placed his knife and fork gently down.

“Marc, I know you don’t want to hear this, but you need to think about what you’re doing with your life.”

“Ok, dad, here we go again.”

“I’m just trying to offer you some free advice.”

“The worst vice is advice, dad.”

“Yes, you’re very smart. Very articulate. So why do you waste it?”

“Yup, I’m a waste. Black sheep of the family. You were just doing the best you could with damaged goods. You kept me past the warranty and now you want your money back.”

“I never said that.”

Actually, I never said that and he never said it either. Not in so many words. That stuff was always subtext … maybe only in my mind. He was trying to be dad. It came off as far too little, far too late.

“So what would you suggest I do with my life?” That’s probably more like what I said.

The next thing he said he had said so many times before, and would say so many times in the years to follow.

“Who am I to tell you how to live your life.”

I slammed my palm flat on the table, making his water glass jump.

“My turn to call bullshit, dad. You do this constantly. You don’t approve of who or what I am, but you’ve got nothing to offer when it comes to who or what I should be. And how would you know anyway? I’m not one of the chosen people, am I? Oh, and by the way, no, I don’t want to come home for Passover. I’m tired of playing one big happy family. The whole Jewish thing has nothing to do with me.”

That shut him up.

Wait. No it didn’t. I didn’t slam anything. I did refuse to come home for Passover, but that was over the phone, years later. What did I actually say there at the restaurant? I pressed him to make some kind of suggestion. He deflected. He generalized. I needed to think ahead. Something with growth potential. Like what?

“Sales?” he finally said, almost like he knew how lame that was.

I decided to let that one go, do him a favor.

I did however make a point of how good the burger was. Never had such a good burger. Not many people are in on just how good the burgers are here. That actually got a smile out of him. Not that he’d been dour; he was pretty mellow. The whole scene was rather hushed and polite.

Alvin had taken off his glasses and was doing that thing he did … breathing on them and wiping off the condensation with his napkin. A crash of plates and glass cut across the room. A waiter a few tables over crouched over the wreckage of his dropped tray. Alvin looked up, blinking.

“So what’s the deal with your will, dad? I get a check? Yeah, I know that’s a lot of money, but I know there’s a trust. The junior varsity team … we get a check and have to sign some document. I hereby relinquish any and all claims ….”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, and by the way … that package you sent. All these years you told me you didn’t know much about my birth parents. It’s right there in black and white. And the whole ‘you were always Jewish’ thing — Drake? Father’s name James Ward? Sounds pretty damn goy to me.”

That pissed him off.

“You know, you’re being the same way you were when I first met you.”

“First met me — first met me? Do you hear yourself?”

I better back it up here. The waiter did drop a tray. And the glass cleaning thing — he did that all the time. Bit of a trigger, though to be honest I still clean my glasses the same way. But he wouldn’t have known what I was talking about even if I had said any of those things. I knew nothing about his will until after he passed. It wasn’t until I was forty that I pressed him for information about my birth parents. And when he called to tell me the package was in the mail, that’s when he said he resented it — that I was being the same way I had always been.

Oh, and I never called him “father.”

So yeah, there was no such outburst. We finished our meal and the waiter came by to clear our plates.

“Coffee, Mr. Weinstein?”

“Yes, Jimmy, and two pieces of cheesecake.”

I would have gone for another beer, but I do love a good cheesecake. I just nodded.

It was over coffee and cheesecake that the next part happened. The exchange I’m sure of.

“Marc, I can’t tell you how to live. But you have a girlfriend — Vicki? She’ll want to get married.”

“Vicki doesn’t want to get married.”

He gave me a tired look and went on. “She will want to get married and have kids, and you’ll need money to support them.”

“Who says I’ll have kids? I don’t see that happening.”

Again the tired look. “You will need money. To buy shoes.” He sighed and added, “Lots of shoes.”

I told him I wanted to be an artist. That’s what I am — an artist, a musician. He leaned back and closed his eyes. Maybe he was trying to imagine it, or at least the wanting of it. But Alvin couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. The notion of being an artist was no more appealing to him than being a garbage man.

He opened his eyes and gave me a look. Was that real concern? Real empathy?

“Musician? You’ll die a pauper.”

“Mozart died a pauper.”

He paused. Then he looked me square in the eye.

“You are no Mozart.”

He did say all that. I’m not making it up. And I didn’t say much in response. The cheesecake was amazing, and the coffee was particularly good as well. We finished up. He pulled out a few hundred dollar bills and laid them on the table.

And that was about it. He went back to his office.

Where did I go? It wasn’t back to Sharon — I had met her at his office a few years earlier and that adventure had run its course. Maybe I went downtown to find Mikey, and we ended up in gay bars till three in the morning. That’s more than likely.

At any rate — he got some things right. I did end up married, though not to Vicki. She married someone else. I had kids. I ended up in software, which paid the bills nicely. I kept up with the music — gigged a ton over the years, wrote all kinds of stuff. After the kids were grown I quit software and supported myself playing and teaching. So I didn’t die a pauper.

We were more alike than I’d ever want to admit, then or now. I can say “bullshit” in that flat way of his, which proved useful raising the kids.

He had to hold his narrative together to live with what he’d done. Not just to me but to my older brother and my sister. The story, as I understand it, was that they wanted to give my grandmother the grandchildren she demanded. So they adopted the three of us. Then Joan turned into fertile Myrtle and produced three of her own. Things had not gone to plan.

My kids are my blood and the connection feels primal. So I get it, in a way I couldn’t then. Shit rolls downhill and every generation passes it along. The older I get the more I forgive everyone.

We’re all driving our boats with wonky steering through turbulent and unknown waters. Families fuck you up, but only if you can’t let it go. You might not believe me, but on the whole — I let it go.

But he was wrong about a lot of things. Not just that day, but later. That phone call — when he said that thing about “the day I met you” — was the last straw. The last time we spoke. He could have come clean. I was always ready to understand. He did the best he could. But if he had just admitted it was his choices, not the flaws of a nine-month-old, that had things unfold the way they did.

A dear friend once told me — put your anger where it belongs. Well, I took that advice. That last conversation, I was this close to letting him have it. But I knew he’d never let it go. He’d kick the bucket telling himself the same story, knowing it was bullshit. So I took a breath and said, in a calm and flat tone, “This conversation is over.” And hung up the phone.

I am nothing like him. I’ll never have the money he had, and that will never be important to me. I’ve never told my kids they couldn’t be what they wanted to be. I never sent them away. My family was not picture perfect — not by a long shot — but it wasn’t built on a false narrative.

But damn, I had to buy a shit ton of shoes.