Natasha and Other Stories Read Online Free Page B

song where I’d happily abandoned it. The rabbi leaned forward, seemingly much more interested in my performance the second time around. When I was finally done, the rabbi gave me a five-dollar bill. For my father, he promised to spread the word about the business to his congregants. He also offered a word of advice: advertise.
    Fifteen minutes after going in, we were back out on the street, hand in hand, and on our way home. For our trouble we had five dollars and the business card of a man who would print my father’s flyers at cost.
    The following week my father, mother, and I gathered around the kitchen table to compose the ideal advertisement for Roman’s Therapeutic Massage. I was given the pen and assigned the responsibility of translating and transcribing my parents’ concept for the flyer. My father wanted a strong emphasis placed on his experience with Olympic athletes, as it would provide prestige and imply familiarity with the human anatomy at the highest level. My mother, on the other hand, believed that his strongest selling point was his status as a Soviet refugee. The most important appeal, she said, was to guilt and empathy. That would get them in the door. Once they were in the door, then my father could impress them with his skill. In the end they agreed on a combination of the two. For my part, I contributed a list of familiar advertising superlatives.
Best New Therapeutic Massage Office!
    Roman Berman, Soviet Olympic coach and refugee from Communist regime, provides Quality Therapeutic Massage Service!
    Many years of experience in Special European techniques!
    For all joint and muscle pain. Car accidents, work accidents, pregnancy, and general good physical conditioning.
    Registered Massage Therapist. Office in convenient location and also visits to your house.
    Satisfaction Guaranteed!
    After the box of flyers arrived, my father and I loaded it into the trunk of the Pontiac and targeted the houses near the office. I took one side of the street, and my father took the other. To counteract my embarrassment, I made it a race: I would be the first to finish. I ran from house to house stuffing the flyers into mailboxes or handing them to people without making eye contact. Every now and again I would look across the street to gauge my father’s progress. He was in no hurry. He wandered from house to house, going up the walkways, never stepping on the lawns. Whereas I tried to avoid people, my father lingered, passing deliberately in front of windows. Heeding my mother’s instructions, he tried to be particularly conspicuous in front of homes with mezuzahs on the doorposts, hoping to catch sight of someone, to engage them in conversation. Most people weren’t interested—except for one man who wanted to know how his own son could get a job delivering flyers.
    With the flyers all gone, a new phase of waiting began. Now with every ring of the phone there was the potential for salvation. The phone existed like a new thing. From the moment we came home we were acutely conscious of it. It was either with us or against us. My father talked to it. As a sign of solidarity, I talked to it as well. When it was silent, my father would plead with it, curse it, threaten it. But when it rang, he would leap. He would come flying from the dinner table, the couch, the toilet. The phone would ring and he would leap. My mother would leap after him—her ear millimeters away from his exposed ear, listening, as if my father’s head was itself the telephone. She listened as friends called, other friends called, my aunt called and called. Everybody called to see whether anybody had called.
    By the time Dr. Kornblum called, an interminable week had passed. It was in the early afternoon and I was home alone. My mother would not be home for another hour, my father later still. When the phone rang I was already seated on the parquet floor in front of the television: I had a Hungarian salami sandwich on my lap as well as the