Little Jerk Goes to Washington
(A Tommy Duncan story)Before he was a rising political star, Jonathan Kander was just a rich kid with a sharp tongue and a mean streak. But one summer afternoon an unexpected force—an elderly woman named Margaret Kahn—put him in his place, and she never let him forget it. Now, with his past buried and his future in the spotlight, one witness to his shame is left wondering… does anyone else remember?
I hadn’t thought of Jonathan Kander in many years, though when I was a kid he was the source of continual disgruntlement. We both belonged to the same country club – Fairfields Golf & Tennis – in Glen Head, Long Island, a place of velvety green lawns, tall gorgeous trees and a magnificent swimming pool in whose tepid waters I spent so many hours that my fingertips turned white and pruny. Fairfields was a Jewish club and its members were mostly German Jews, many of whom had escaped Hitler Germany. My grandparents, Ida and Werner Gittelsman, had been members, which meant that my own parents were members, too. Some of the best days of my life were spent at Fairfields, carefree and happy, without a single hint that trouble would ever occur in our large, great democracy.
Over the past few years, Jonathan has been in the news a lot, though it took me longer than it should have to realize he was the same Jonathan Kander I’d known as a child.
Probably I just wanted to remain blind and impervious to him. He’d frightened me even when we were kids, and because our mothers were kind of besties I got to know him quite well. And didn’t like him, had never liked him, would never like him. To start with, his looks: thin and scrawny with a know-it-all face and tight-lidded bulbous eyes. (My mother, Irine, said he probably had a thyroid condition.) He talked a lot; in fact, he talked incessantly. At the dinner table, when we went over to their house for a meal, he took center stage, babbling away about people he knew (and despised) and high school courses that were compulsory and that he thought had no merit. He was entertaining, I have to give him that, but he was also so judgemental about everything and everyone that it was often hard to listen to him. Because he was so obnoxious, I nick-named him Little Jerk and that was what I always privately called him in my head.
Even though we were the same age and in the same grade at school, Little-Jerk-Jonathan totally ignored me. Unlike Jonathan, whose brain could cough up facts and statistics at the drop of a hat, I was a quiet child whose mind wandered and couldn’t retain anything involving numbers. I was a big reader and excelled in language arts, but I couldn’t do math and never was able to move beyond long division. Nowadays they call that dyscalculia, but back then it was a handicap that made me feel dumb. And so, I always felt dumb and stupid around Jonathan. Which meant I kept my mouth closed in his presence, wouldn’t utter a peep.
But I’d watch him closely, his prominent Adam's apple that moved rapidly up and down his throat, his bulgy eyes, his way of dominating conversation, his picky way of eating. His family had a black housekeeper who once had slapped him hard in the face for an impertinent remark. When Jonathan complained to his mother about this, she told him he’d better behave himself or he’d spend the next few days in his room, and that led to him giving her the silent treatment for weeks on end. I’m not sure their relationship ever improved after that, and there was a coolness between them that has continued to this day.
The Kanders were a liberal family. Jonathan, a contrarian, disputed all their beliefs till it became painful for them to be in his company. But all this was in the past. Now that so much focus has been placed on Jonathan due to his affiliation with a power hungry, wanna-be-king president, I remembered an incident that had taken place when we were both sixteen.
Our families were having lunch together at Fairfields. It was a midsummer’s day and we sat outside on the dining room terrace where waiters ran to and fro with trays of food, and the air smelled of French fries and the richness of the deep green leaves from the trees surrounding us. A waiter I’d never seen before approached our table. He was small and thin with a head of fine black hair and a cafe-au-lait, almost white complexion. We found out later that he was actually a busboy filling in for a waiter who’d called in sick. He spoke very poor English and this infuriated Jonathan who began to have a hissy fit right there at the table. “I’d like a medium rare hamburger with mayonnaise, mustard and ketchup on the bun, pickles and tomatoes on the side with lots of relish and finely chopped onions,” he said.
The waiter looked at him with confusion on his face. A moment passed, and then Jonathan said loudly: “What? You don’t understand me?”
The waiter shook his head. “I no speak English,” he said.
“You don’t speak English! Then what the hell are you doing here?” .
The poor waiter just stood there, not knowing what to do or how to answer.
“What kind of place is this to hire employees that can’t communicate?” Jonathan announced at the top of his voice..
“Shush!” Jonathan’s mother, Bette, commanded.
“Oh, shut up, Mom! It’s outrageous that Fairfields employs staff that don’t speak English. We pay enough money to expect the best service!”
“Please behave!” Bette hissed
I wanted to dive under the table and crumple up like a dead bug. Meanwhile, Jonathan’s father, a mild-mannered stockbroker named Harry Kander said, “Okay everyone, let’s calm down.”
People were already staring at us.
“Why should I calm down?” Jonathan exploded. “We live in the U.S. where everyone speaks English.”
“Well, not necessarily everyone,” Harry said. “We have immigrants who –”
“Immigrants!” Jonathan scoffed in his high, thin, nasal voice. “That’s the trouble! We have too many immigrants in this country!”
“But we’re a country of immigrants,” my own mother, Irene, pointed out.
“Your own grandparents were immigrants,” Bette added.
“I don’t care about that!” Jonathan screeched through a spray of saliva. “It’s time to shut the gates to all these foreigners who want to take advantage of our schools and medical services.”
The man at the next table was paying close attention. “Now listen here, son,” he said quietly. “Our country has always been a haven for the poor and oppressed. That’s what it was set up to be.”
Jonathan swiveled in his chair to look at the guy, eyes bugging out even more than usual with anger. “Well, it’s time for that to end! You’re just too old, wealthy and ill-informed to see that!”
“Jonathan!” Harry Kander warned harshly.
“It’s okay for him to express his opinion,” the man, a metals trader named Sam Zimmerman, said.
“Not in such a rude way!” someone two tables away blurted.
“And not in such an ugly manner!” sang out an expensively dressed woman who sat near the entrance to the dining room. She had long white hair gathered in a twist and a cluster of Winston diamonds that sparkled on each earlobe.
Jonathan stood from his seat and glared at her. “You shut up, too!” he snarled, but I heard him add, “Stupid old bitch,” under his breath.
The “stupid old bitch” was named Margaret Kahn, a former professor of political policy at Harvard who spoke several languages and had been an advisor to Ronald Reagan.
Her eyes, which were a clear sparkling blue, remained fixed on Jonathan as he jumped from his table and strode toward the offending waiter who had appeared just then with a tray of drinks. I knew what he was going to do and held my breath. Apparently Margaret Kahn knew what he was going to do also, and rose gracefully from her chair. Within a few steps, Jonathan was inches from the waiter and held out his foot to trip him. But Margaret, eighty years old, got there first. With a perfectly manicured, thin and knobby hand, she grabbed hold of Jonathan’s collar and began to drag him from the terrace. Her long fingernails must have dug into his neck because he gave a yowl and suddenly his body went a little limp and his feet barely seemed to touch the ground. The old lady was strong! And she didn't let up, hauling Jonathan through the dining room and out onto the front porch where I could no longer see them.
The whole terrace began to clap. I wanted to clap too, but held my hands in my lap, not wanting to embarrass Jonathan’s parents. Moments later, I excused myself from the table on the pretext of having to go to the ladies room. Once I was in the club house, however, I pivoted toward the screened windows overlooking the porch, trying to seem like a normal person as I dawdled by the curtains. Directly outside, heads close together, sat Jonathan and the stately Margaret Kahn. To my surprise, they were holding hands. Or rather, Jonathan’s hand was tightly clasped in Margaret’s.
“You forgot your promise,” Margaret was saying to Jonathan.
Jonathan’s shoulders were slumped, as if in defeat. “Well, I –”
“No! You conveniently forgot our agreement, and now there will be consequences.”
What the hell were they talking about? Aside from an elderly man who’d fallen asleep with his head on his chest, they were alone on the porch. From where I stood, I could hear them quite well even though they kept their voices barely above a whisper.
“I was seated behind you on the terrace, so you apparently didn’t see me or have the sense to look around before launching your appalling attack on that poor waiter,” Margaret said, turning to face Jonathan directly.
“So what … what do you want me to do about it?” Jonathan stammered.
Margaret let go of his hand. “I am probably the only person on the planet who knows what happened to you, or why you hate immigrants so much – especially those of color.”
Jonathan shrank deeper into his chair.
It seemed that he – vicious, pompous, name-calling, Little Jerk Jonathan – was afraid of this elderly woman who, despite grabbing him by the neck, didn’t look strong enough to walk across the lawn to her car.
“First,” Margaret continued, “I want you to tell me in your own words what happened that day six years ago.”
“You know what happened,” Jonathan mumbled.
“In your own words!” Margaret commanded.
Jonathan’s whole body seemed to sag. “I got into a fight with a guy who beat me up,” he muttered.
“Who was the guy?”
Jonathan was silent a moment. Then he said, “One of the kitchen staff’s kids.”
“And why’d you get into a fight with him?”
“Because I, um, called him a bad word.”
“Tell me the word you used, please.”
“Spic,” Jonathan said begrudgingly.
“And why would you use such a word?”
“He told me I was just a stupid rich kid.”
“I see. And what prompted him to say that?”
“Godamnit, you already know the whole story! You were there!”
“Yes, I was. But from your behavior a few minutes ago you seem to have opted out of our agreement. So tell me again why that boy beat you up.”
“Okay, okay! I told him since he wasn’t a member of this stupid club, he wasn’t allowed to stand next to me on the lawn.”
“In other words, you were rude and arrogant, a behavior you don’t seem to have outgrown. What are we going to do about this, Jonathan?”
Jonathan sat very still. It pleased me that the back of his neck looked thin and wobbly. I was enjoying this.
“I’m not hearing an answer, Jonathan, so I’m going to tell you what you'll do. You’ll go back into the dining room, find that waiter and apologize. And then you will offer to wash his car.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Now get off your ass and do what I’ve instructed you to do.”
Jonathan rose haltingly from his chair. His movements were very slow. He looked as if he’d just been hit by a truck. Margaret rose with him, seeming the more robust of the two. As they left the porch, the old lady put her hand on his arm and said, “Remind me again of our agreement, Jonathan.”
“That I’d never say anything bad about people who were different or less fortunate than me.”
“Or else?”
“Or else you’d tell my parents and make a public example of me.”
“Yes, exactly. So here we go.”
She kept her hand on Jonathan’s arm as they left the porch. I wrapped myself more deeply into the curtain and held my breath as they sailed past me. Then I turned and followed them.
I missed Jonathan’s apology to the waiter, which took place in the kitchen with Margaret hovering over him. But I did see the aftermath: Jonathan out in the parking lot, washing the waiter’s car, a rusted old Chevy. If I’d had a camera, I would have photographed him sullenly doing the job.
So here we are now with the exact same Jonathan Kander about to snag a cabinet seat with an unruly president. A president who can’t read and doesn’t really know anything beyond the wildness of his own ambitions. Margaret Kahn died in 2016 when she’d reached the age of ninety-five. That means I am probably the only person alive who knows about Jonathan’s shame and humiliation all those years ago when he got the shit kicked out of him by a dishwasher’s kid. If anyone else out there knows about this, I’d like to hear from them.