SAMMY
d. castleman
Sammy was about four hundred pounds of amiable blubber, tall as a windmill and clumsy as a colt, and Sammy always tried to do the right thing. When Paul and Marilyn were dating, and later when they were actually engaged to be married, and when their parents were so unsympathetic to the match because she was Catholic and he was Jewish and she was years older, Sammy tried in his feckless ineffectual manner so very hard to smooth everybody’s feelings and to placate everybody. Unfortunately, Sammy’s best attempts served only to anger everybody at his own expense and to appease nobody.
Paul was my closest friend in high school and for a small while after, and though we were too young and too callow ever to explore our psyches together, yet we spent much thoughtless and innocent time together. We dated together many times, he with Marilyn and I with whomever happened to be my love interest at the moment. And sometimes just the three of us would go to the movies or to the beach, and we spent long evenings just watching the television together. After a while they had decided that it was pointless to subject themselves to their parents’ constant bickerings and howlings of remonstrance, so they’d moved into an apartment together and we three spent much time there.
Once upon a time a day appeared when they decided that marriage was the thing. Of course the news was anathema to each of their parents and to each of their siblings, but Paul and Marilyn had grown accustomed to a relentless disapproval and heeded none of the outcry. Announcements were made and mailed concerning a civil ceremony and on the day appointed we all converged inside the old courthouse in San Rafael.
The presiding judge was a pleasant Jewish fellow, which may have pleased Pauls’ parents a bit, but which certainly did nothing to assuage the feelings of Marilyn’s parents. Her proud father, watching his baby being ripped from her family by Christ’s murderers and their accomplices, cried openly and inconsolably. Paul’s mother was a proud and indomitable martinet with a Medusa’s glare, cuddly as a basilisk.
Paul’s family and friends lined one wall of the courthouse chamber, and glared carnivorously at Marilyn’s family and friends who lined the opposing wall, exchanging glare for glare mercilessly. Of all of those sixty or so folks who were present, I noticed that only a few seemed to have been spared the disease of hatred, and only a few of those few noticed what the atmosphere meant, and portended.
I stood near the judge and the betrothing couple, and the ceremony was performed. Fortunately I hadn’t misplaced the ring and I was conscious enough to surrender it at the proper moment. Everywhere was a great gnashing of teeth and a wringing of hands, and everywhere tears and wailing. The poseurs believed in their poses. The ambience was excruciating, as if everybody were moving and speaking underwater or in flames.
Across town and across the street from that newish and New York Jewish delicatessen called so cleverly, The Delicate Essence, was a restaurant whose name has been changed so frequently that I cannot now recall what it was called then, and to this restaurant everybody repaired for the wedding reception and its early buffet. We carried our atmosphere with us and we were led into a set of large rooms with an open bar and buffet, and with a large set of tables in one unobtrusive corner.
Still the two tribes held aloof and still they glared at each other, each remaining so intransigently in its allotted righteousness. Hatred was.
Sammy decided to be amiable, and Sammy discovered the cache of champagne and appropriated a bottle and a glass, and Sammy began his appointed rounds through the bitter groupings. To the closest person he strolled and he stood immediately before that person until that person acknowledged him. Then he smiled at his target and he chatted calmly and he filled each of their glasses with champagne. He brought his glass up to his lips and he poured its contents into his throat, he smiled again, and he walked on to the next person. He repeated the performance continually, sometimes interrupting his progress to fetch another bottle, and then returning precisely to where he had left off.
Tension remained critical despite Sammy’s ministrations with the bubbly, and still Paul’s mother held bitter court at the dining table, attended by friends and by some very quiet husbands. She was attired like a matron empress, with a low cut gown from which her voluminous bosom protruded with a cleavage as ample as that more famous Grand Canyon, and her back leaned forward from her chair so the chair wouldn’t wrinkle her fine gown whose couturer’s name was known to every woman in the room. Her hair was newly styled into a rising mass that sat like a pterodactyl’s nest atop her noggin. Her jewelry had small names.
Marilyn’s father approached me as I stood apolitically on the rim of the crowd, and as he approached I could see that he was still crying and I felt sorry for the man. Projecting myself into the future, I could imagine how I would feel had I an only daughter I had loved since birth, a daughter to whom I had said things I could never say to anybody else, and had she married whom I considered to be some Caliban who had been hatched of the earth’s sewage.
When he arrived at me he stopped and he focused and I could see that in his mind the whole world had disappeared and only he and I remained. His eyes swam out of their tears while he focused. “You mysogonist animal,” he said, and he swung about and walked away without retreating. From across the room Paul’s mother glared at me malignantly, both for consorting with an enemy and in utter agreement with her enemy.
I could see that Sammy had finally achieved his way to her and that he was humbly, patiently, and smilingly waiting for her to acknowledge his presence, as he held his liquid gift toward her. She felt his presence beside her and she glared up into his half-lidded eyes. His knees sagged for just a moment and he slammed his knees up into a locking position, and he smiled down on her.
She said something cruel and sharp and he reacted as if he’d been soundly slapped, and again he smiled benignly. He leaned forward over her and his mouth opened and instantly he vomited magnificently onto her. Instantly she was drenched as if by a burning acidic lava and it rolled cascading down her back and it gushed and bubbled from the depths of her intimidating cleavage and along her lap and down her legs and onto her shoes. Her proud hair hung in rags or swung in ropes runningly, and she was wiping at her eyes and her foamy mouth was sputtering as she lurched to her feet like an enraged and wounded mastodon.
Paul and I raced to Sammy and we carried, pushed, and urged him outside the restaurant to where my car was parked, where we tucked him snoringly. When we returned his mother was gone and the emergency seemed almost forgotten. Tension was gone and animosities were gone and everybody was mingling nicely. I did not see Marilyn’s father.
