Robert Cooperman

Dad the Math Whiz

Sunday evenings, we went to
Aaron’s Deli or a neighborhood fish
or steakhouse or the local Chinese place. 
When the check arrived, Jeff or I grabbed it
and waited  for Dad to tell us, exactly,
what the bill came to.  He got it right,
not even five cents off, every time.

I thought it was magic, but looking back,
it was him growing up “Without,”
his dad a seasonal fur trade piece worker,
Dad sometimes told to find his own meals:
stealing pickles off cafeteria tables,
making mustard or ketchup sandwiches,
lifting sausage links like the Artful Dodger.

He could add, subtract, multiply, and divide
in his head faster than I could deal cards
for our gin games he always won.

The apartment house professional gambler—
code for mobster—confided to me once,
“If your old man let me back him
in a few high stakes poker games,
we could both retire and live like kings.”

Dad was satisfied with watching
Jeff’s and my faces glow with amazement,
when he’d tell us exactly how much
our dinners cost, his smile bigger
than if he’d taken the world’s best
poker players for their last pennies.

Bed Checks: Camp Cejwin, Port Jervis, New York, 1967

Every half hour
the counselor on duty
checked that campers
weren’t playing board games,
cards, craps, or reading by flashlight;
but peacefully in bed,
unlike Steve Paley,
who sleep-walked,
needing to be escorted
back to his bunk
without startling him awake.

Thank goodness,
whenever I was on duty
he was safely tucked in
and breathing
like an idling engine,

unlike Freddie Pincus,
the poor kid who gasped
with asthma the one time
I fell asleep. 

He didn’t die, thank God,
but needed a night
in the nearby hospital,
then sent home.    

 

Robert Cooperman's latest collection is The Death and Rebirth of Ophelia (Kelsay Books).  Finishing Line Press has just brought out his chapbook, August 24, 1957.  Forthcoming from Kelsay Books is An Oar for Odysseus.