When I was not yet a teenager, my mother went back to work on Saturdays during the fur season, modeling sable coats in a showroom owned by the man who would eventually become her second husband. Fur season generally began in late September and continued on through the following early April, which meant that during Christmas, I spent my Saturdays roaming around Manhattan with my father. Together, we would eat subversively large, Germanic lunches at places like Luchow’s, and then go shopping at the original Abercrombie and Fitch, which was well-known among the horsey set for its expensive fishing rods, shotguns, and tents. When he was in a suburban sort of mood, my father was drawn to a south shore Long Island mall like metal to magnet, and it was there we spent many a holiday afternoon scamming the Wurlitzer organ salesman before heading back to the city to pick up my mother from her job.
By the time I was eleven, I had already been playing the guitar for seven years, and was just beginning to branch out to other instruments, like banjo, mandolin, and piano. I loved and still love to play them all, but back then, if you plunked me down in front of a keyboard at Christmas time, I’d invariably start to play carols, even though we were Jews. There we’d be, post-lunch, pre-dinner, milling around this mall, past incense-hazy candle stores, listening to Perry Como on the piped in Christmas muzaq. When we ambled past the Wurlitzer store, the salesman — a thinnish guy with greasy dark hair, dressed in a russet brown polyester triple weave suit with a sprig of fake holly stuck in his lapel — stood loitering around the entrance to the organ showroom, looking like Mr. Bean.
“Bet I can teach the little lady how to play in no time flat–” he’d gloat to my father, winking at my diminutive, snorkel parka-wearing self as we strolled past on our way to our destination: the mall steakhouse next door, for a frozen Beef Wellington and virgin Eggnog pre-supper snack.
“I guess,” my father would say to him, shrugging his shoulders while I stood there.
“Why don’t you give it a shot, honey,” the salesman beckoned. “Let your daddy hold your coat, and sit right down over here.” I pulled my coat off and handed it to my father while the salesman pulled the bench away from an enormous, four foot-wide pedal organ that sat on a low riser near the entrance to the store, its red levers marked TUBA and SOUSAPHONE and BOSSA NOVA. He flipped the ON switch and the organ purred like a kitten.
He pressed another button marked RHYTHM, and a muffled, electronic uptempo began, untethered to any music or melody, like an arrythmia.
“The keys are marked with numbers, honey, so just press the ones that correspond to these—” The salesman propped the EASY ORGAN 1-2-3 sheet music for Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas on the built in walnut music stand in front of me.
“Think you can do it, sweetie?” my father would ask.
“I’m just not sure, Daddy –” I’d say.
“Come on, honey–” the salesman implored, impatiently. “You’ve already got your rhythm section. Let’s give her a whirl—”
The small crowd gathering around behind me, laughing at the fact that my feet didn’t even reach the pedals. I pushed up my sleeves, took a deep breath, flipped the BOSSA NOVA lever, and played The Girl from Ipanema.
“That’s not very Christmas-y,” the smiling salesman said through his teeth. He stood next to me on the riser, sweating, his face flushing a deep, holiday red. The crowd applauded wildly as I climbed down and took my coat from my father.
“Wow–” my father said to the salesman. “I guess it really is a cinch!”
“I can have this baby sitting in your living room in time for Christmas dinner —” the salesman said, taking a leatherette pad out of his jacket pocket to write up the order.
“I don’t think so,” my father said, handing me my parka and ushering me away as the salesman blanched. “But thanks all the same —and Merry Christmas.”
A few minutes later, my father and I were sitting in a booth at the steakhouse next door, listening to Perry Como sing Ave Maria, and sharing a Beef Wellington before heading back to Manhattan to pick up my mother.
My father took thoughtful sips of his gin Gibson from a small martini glass.
“Really got him that time,” he said.
