They were in The Clock, that restaurant/bar in downtown Columbus the night before his wedding. He was with his father and his brother, and this was, of all things, his bachelor party. Wasn’t much of a party. They sat at the bar and ate there and then had a few drinks. None of them could possibly know it, but this would be one of the last times the three of them were alone together like this.
So they ate. And they drank. No one got drunk. Bill told the story about Jim Morrison and the Doors, how it was late-night after they’d played at the Civic Center and the bar was locked up because it was getting to after-hours. Only people already inside could be served and last call had already been announced. This was where the bartender jumped over the bar with his shotgun in hand and stood at the door yelling “Get out of here you goddamn hippies.”
It was a story, a true-life story. He told it with no embellishment and only a little extra narrative in which he told about all the girls inside screaming at the bartender, telling him who those hippies standing outside those locked doors were.
“Man, that’s The Doors at the door.”
You couldn’t make this stuff up.
His father, Big Red One in WW II, three and a half years a POW in Stalag IIIB Furstenberg, born into Orthodox Jewry and even if not by choice an Orthodox Jew until he went to the army, wasn’t going to come to this wedding.
Sitting at the bar with his father and brother, getting a bit high on the booze, Bill remembered the phone call. He stood in a phone booth talking on a pay phone telling his father he was getting married and they were doing it Memorial Day weekend. He was calling to invite his father and also to let him know that his wife-to-be wasn’t Jewish so they were having a civil ceremony.
So there it was on the table and his father’s first response was that he wasn’t coming.
“Yeah, okay, but I’m still getting married.”
The shock shouldn’t have been so great. His brother had married a non-Jew and so what?
End result of the call, bottom line, was that his father was invited and Bill hoped he’d come and that was that.
Same shit as forever with his father. Everything was a “no,” an “I forbid,” and then you had to fight him (not literally) to prove it was what you really wanted. That’s what had happened with football, with going away to school which Bill didn’t do at first. Nope. He’d done his first semester at Queens College, CUNY, and only then had he gone away.
Jesus Christ, Bill thought laying there next to his wife, stroking her softly on her arm after having just made love to her after having turned down Rosie and Edelgarde who wanted to take him home with them to shower, yeah, right, he thought, to shower.
Ain’t that a kick in the head?
It was a kick in the head.
At the last minute his father did come, but his step-mother stayed home. Maybe it was because of her that he and his brother went away from home and then went on to marry non-Jewish girls. Wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last time he thought this.
“It’s not too late,” his father said, this out of nowhere. “If you’re not sure, get the hell out of town.”
Say what? Bill didn’t say anything. He looked at his father. Bill was stunned, shocked, flabbergasted. He remembered wondering, thinking, if only momentarily, how is one ever to be sure? Really? Truly? That love at first sight, it’s all a crock of shit.
Get out of town, he thought. The idea wasn’t so bad. He didn’t dismiss the idea off-the-cuff. Right then and there, for a moment, he actually thought about it. He actually considered it. Then he thought that if he was a hundred percent sure he would have simply dismissed the idea.
