This One's for You, Jerry

Jerome Finkelstein

 October 12, 1928-March 23, 2026

(read full obituary here)

This is a tribute to Jerry's influence on and mentorship of two of our previous writing groups: Monday Night Writers and Plotters Ink. 

While it isn't possible to capture Jerry's essence - or his raspy voice -  in a blog post, perhaps reading some of his unique flash fiction will conjure some fond memories of our long-time leader and friend.

As I scrolled through his stories, I was surprised (but shouldn't have been), that many of them dealt with death and loss. But there's also his wry, suggestive humor, some period pieces, and always his keen observations of human nature.

Readers: Please feel free to comment on any or all of the stories below. You will have to scroll all the way through to the end, though. Enjoy. 

- - - CJA

From Monday Night Writers Group

There's No Place Like Home

by Jerry Finkelstein - Copyright  2011? 

What a downer!

Dorothy, just back from Oz, looks straight at you and, smiling through her tears, says, “There’s no place like home.” Are you kidding me? You just came from one of the most amazing adventures any girl got to live and that’s your message? Take another look outside the door of your one room house and what do you see? A dreary Kansas landscape, dried up cracked earth, no green grass. Everything is in shades of brown. You’re living a life in poverty and depression. You’re living a life in sepia.

Sure, you’ve got Uncle Henry and Aunt Em. You love them and they love you, although we didn’t see them put up much of a fuss to find you while you were gone. The farmhands, don’t you think it’s about time you got someone your own age for a playmate? In your life at home there are no wizards, no witches, no flying monkeys. All you have to make you miserable is an old biddy on a bike ready to steal away Toto, your barking, snapping dog. But there’s no magic. There’s no color.

You sang beautifully of a wondrous land beyond the rainbow. You found out you have to leave home to get there. At home you dream in vain of a knight in shining armor. Here at home there are no heroes. There are no puzzles to solve. Did you know that when you wished yourself home to stay you put aside any chance for glorious love? There is certainly no chance to be a Nobel prize winner and one day to win a life changing lottery ticket, to wake up smiling, without the tears, in a strange bed, a strange room, a strange house. No chance to be lucky.

Dorothy, I beg you. For the sake of all the children who watch TV, think over the message you left us at the end of the movie. Let us see you pack your little suitcase, wave goodbye to Henry, aunt Em and the boys, hop, skip and jump down the road and get out of Kansas. There may be no place like home, but get out of there. Now.

While the Storm Clouds Gather Far Across the Sea *

by Jerry Finkelstein, Copyright  2016

This is the way it was. Red stars hung from the windows, you saw them as you walked by. Someone in the family was in the service, a son most likely. In Texas, just drafted. In England. On all those islands in the Pacific. My brother was in Italy.

When my brother was called he was scared shitless. And I, on the other hand, was the happiest kid on the block. Finally, I got the room to myself. I got the bed to myself. No one now to hog the covers. The desk was all mine. And I was happier still when he went to fight the real war in Italy.

The mothers in the neighborhood would see each other on the street and talk of the mail they received, glad they received mail even if nothing much could be said in the letters. They also looked at the windows without the red stars and wondered what was so wrong with their sons not to be drafted, not to be in the service fighting in a war so far away. Some mothers cursed at these windows, the windows without the stars, the red stars.

The kids in the neighborhood didn’t pay much attention to the red stars in the windows. They were having a great time playing stickball in the street, hockey on roller skates, soaking up the sun and walking over the bodies at Coney Island. Even in the winter they took the hour and a half subway ride just to get a Nathan’s hot dog.

These were also the years of personal anxieties, like lipstick on the collar, the hickey on the neck, the stains on the sheets. Joey said he went all the way with Shirley. He also said he got to third base with Hannah and Vicki. No one believed him. When they got together after their dates they reported, in detail, on what happened. Everybody knew some stuff was made up. But which parts?

They did dance, every night if they could. And they sang the songs, All Or Nothing At All, When The Lights Go On Again (All Over The World). They  knew all of them.  And they knew the bands and the singers too. On top of all of that there was school and homework and household chores. It was that kind of neighborhood and I was having a good time of it. I had my room.

The mothers gathered in the street to talk about one of the stars hanging in one of the windows. The red star was replaced. Now it was a gold star hanging in the window.

*These are the first lines of Irving Berlin’s song God Bless America

The Sounds of the City

by Jerry Finkelstein, Copyright  2015

The city never sleeps. You heard that one before. At least eight million people in the city you figure someone out there is yawning, belching, scratching somewhere on his body, farting. On a clear night like this you can see the bridge from up here. The traffic seems to be stalled. All those white lights heading this way. The red lights are going in the opposite direction, out of state, towards Jersey, and they’re going at a steady clip. No stall there. It’s the white lights that are having a tough time getting in. Robert is looking down on all this from his 28^th floor apartment window, giddy with delight. He loves the sights and the sounds of the city.

It’s been a long time since he heard the sounds of the tenements, the wailing of the cats in the backyard, the barking dogs, the bickering of the couple upstairs. He remembered the night the bickering turned to screaming and then the baby howling, yelling for help in the night. The senses didn’t have to be hyperalert then, you came home smelling the suppers in other people’s apartments, the pee on the stairs going up one flight, the dirty garbage waiting for pickup.

The smells of this high rise were clean smells. The apartment on the 28^th floor afforded a view of the city quite different from the tenement one. No wailing cats here. The walls are soundproof, no howling babies here. When Robert looks out of this window he sees other buildings all lit up. He sees the bridge with its string of lights and he see the traffic along the streets and avenues of the city. The highways never seem rid of its flood of traffic, something’s always going on there. The ordinary sounds of the city are a bit distant from up here, but Robert easily recognizes them. The firetrucks, the ambulances and the cop cars are all insistent, you hear them above all others. And Robert hears the others too. He listens. He had just flushed the toilet and knows he’s part of all these noises that fill the city. He smiles at the thought. He thought of Marta. She still has to get the hang of it.

Marta was waiting for Robert just outside the flower shop at 64^th Street. It was cold and getting colder. Late night shoppers shuffled past her. She didn’t see him. It began to snow. It was a quiet sound, she didn’t notice. She tried Robert’s cell. No answer. She left a message. “Where are you?” she wondered. People turned and looked at her, she must have said it aloud. “Well,” she asked again, “Where are you?”

He said, “I’m right here.” She didn’t hear him. She looked up and down the street.

No sign of him. “You better button up,” he said, “It’s getting real cold.” He’s never this late, she thought. Should she worry? He wiped some fallen snow from her coat, she didn’t notice. Well, he thought, I have a lot to teach her. He thought he’d start out taking her up to his apartment on the 28^th floor.   

Disappearing Acts

by Jerry Finkelstein, copyright 2015

If you're talking about secrets you're talking about Sylvia, Sylvia Platt. She might have changed her name since the old days, but that was her, Sylvia and her million secrets. Maybe not a million, but she had a lot of them.

In the old days, the days of the sweater and the bobby sox, she practiced her Ava Gardner smile in front of the mirror until she got it just right. Then she worked on the look. And then the walk. Finally, she turned and came on to you, the face, the terrific body in the tight sweater, the smile, the slow walk. You had to hold your breath, maybe step back a little before something embarrassing happened. Something swell was going on and she knew all about it. And she wasn't telling.

She was telling Alex. He knew all about it. He had her on Tuesday nights. Her parents were out on Tuesday and that was the night for Alex.  Afterwards, our gang of four got the details. But he didn't tell all. No one tells all. Do you tell about the time your arm fell asleep because she rested her head on it for half an hour? Or the time you rolled over and fell off the couch. Good for a laugh but there are some things you just don't talk about. Sometimes I was with her on Fridays. Just kissing. Never unbuttoned my shirt, never unzipped my pants. And she never told me a thing.

The last time I saw Sylvia she was pushing a baby carriage down the street. I hardly recognized her. She was older, of course, this was after Alex married Marilyn and the rest of the four moved out of the city. She smiled and said hello. The look was gone. She was busy sucking on an ice cream cone.

I always wondered what happened to Sylvia. She was bound to disappear. Too many secrets, too many promises. At some point she's not there. We didn't talk. I nodded my head and walked by.

Some Stubborn Guy (or, Two People Talking)

by Jerry Finkelstein, copyright 2014

Louie's got a short fuse.
You can say that again.
He just blows up. He goes berserk.
You don't see it coming.
Flies off the handle. Just like that.
You got that one right.
Some stubborn guy. And what a sore loser.
Even back then, when we were kids, he'd let off steam throwing stones at windows.
At the Casino, last week, they called security to get him out. What an embarrassment.
He'll never play there again.
Last winter, remember, he blew his top because he got ticketed in the Publix parking lot. He forgot his brother's handicap sticker and thought he'd get away with it.
He should know you don't screw around with the handicapped people in Florida. Half the people down there are handicapped. They got a big lobby in Washington. You want to stay away from them, better safe than sorry.
Especially when they're driving, they're dangerous.
You don't want to go near them.
They're worse than Louie.
At least Louie knows how to drive. He just gets angry. Like tonight.
Well, can you blame him? She cut right in front of him. We could have had an accident. And she didn't even stop to see if we were all right. The car almost flipped.
Would you call it road rage, what Louie went through when he hit the guard rail?
I don't think so. Road rage you get only on the road, in a car. I don't think you get road rage if the car is not moving and you're parked in a Publix parking lot. I don't know what Louie's got, but whatever it is he's had it since before he threw stones at houses.
What Louie has, he has anywhere, anytime.
Poor Sylvia.
What's wrong with her?
She has to live with him.
I thought we were talking about Louie.
We were. Now I'm talking about Sylvia.

The Truth of the Matter

by Jerry Finkelstein, copyright 2014


We had all just come from the cemetery. We washed our hands at the doorstep and then entered the house to eat, to mumble something about life goes on, to talk of our memories. To commiserate.

He was a tyrant, said one of the sons. He was strict. Too strict, echoed another son. Stubborn, added the first son. There was no one more stubborn, did you ever meet anyone more stubborn? He was stubborn, you got that right, said a daughter out there in the crowd of family. Let's face it, said the son who called him a tyrant, he was a bastard. But you'd never know it from all the eulogies we heard this morning. Who was that guy they were talking about? Not my father. I didn't know who they were talking about. I looked for him in the obit. I didn't find him, he wasn't there. They had his name spelled right, but he wasn't the man I knew. I didn't know who they were writing about.  The son doing all the talking looked at each of his nephews and said, You better write this down, and all your life write it all down because no one is keeping track of what is going on. Don't count on your memory because that's going to go. And besides, memory changes everything. So write it now. Keep writing it. Someday you'll wonder what happened. You'll know because you wrote it down.

Well, I wrote it all down and that's the way it went. My uncle didn't stop his rant about his father. Others agreed, adding their own stories that happened a long time ago. Others thought he mellowed as he got older. Others didn't know what they were all talking about, they didn't remember any of these stories, the man is dead for Godsakes, let's forget about it and move on.

We all moved on and a lot of us passed on. I'm lucky I guess, I'm still around, still writing it down. Sometimes I do wonder what happened. And lately I wonder about that a lot. Did I get it straight, the way it was? I couldn't get it all down. By leaving something out did I change the story? I guess it's turning out to be my story and never mind about getting at the truth of the matter.

Mirrors Would Do Well to Reflect Further

by Jerry Finkelstein, copyright 2014

When no one is watching I look in the mirror and fuss with my hair. A little more gel. Maybe not. I don't think I'm using the right comb, is there a right comb? Mine has some of its teeth missing. Maybe that's it. Smooth it down there, a little more gel will do it. Jeez it just won't stay down, the part is all wrong and it's standing up again. I throw the comb and the brush off the sink and to the floor and I yell out a word my mother doesn't like to hear. She's right on it and calls out, "Is everything all right in there?" I'm busy cursing, am I crying? But this she doesn't hear. I pick up the stuff from the floor and start all over again. What for, nothing's going to change. If anyone touches my hair tonight, I swear, I'm going to kill him!

I look for pimples that aren't there. I'm close to the mirror now finding the blackheads. Gotcha! I'd die if I had a bad case of acne, no way do I want to grow up with a pockmarked face like Robert Redford. I find the mole. It's still there. Mom says it's a beauty mark. But it's a mole.

I hold the cigarette this way and that, trying out different poses but none of them seem right. I'm not even sure how I want to look with a cigarette in my hand or in my mouth or putting it out in a cigarette holder. The mirror is too small and the bathroom is too small and the whole five room apartment is too small for me to move around in, to see what I look like lighting a cigarette, holding it, walking around with it, sitting on the couch and taking a few puffs. One of these days I'll drop the bomb and tell Mom I'm moving out of here. Not anytime soon. I'll tell her. Maybe next year. Once again I'm looking in the mirror and combing back my hair. But I'm thinking, what's the hurry? Not next year, maybe the year after that.


Family Gatherings

by Jerry Finkelstein, copyright 2013

It didn't take much to get her up to my house and into bed. Some drinks, dinner, a few more drinks, is all.

In the car she was light-headed, giggly, laughing all the way. In the house she was unsteady on her feet, she held the wall all the way up the stairs. In the bedroom she skipped a few steps, staggered a bit and finally fell on the bed. And she was an incessant talker, saying things like, What am I doing here? I can't believe this! I can't believe me! Quickly I ran down stairs and got her another drink.

"Oh God," she giggled. She undressed with the new drink in her hand, she didn't spill a drop. "What would my mother think?" She giggled, laughed some more, hollered, whispered, hissed. And then she introduced me to her father. "He'd never approve," she said. He'd want to know what I did for a living. I got to know her sister, she'd ask if I were Catholic. Her girlfriends were here too, laughing with her, teasing her, telling me she needs another drink.

The bed was getting too crowded for me. "How many people did you bring here with you?" I wondered out loud. Naked, I hopped off the bed and looked into the bathroom. "No one here!" I shouted. I fell to my knees and looked under the bed. I ran to the closet across the room. "Look," I said, "I don't see anybody here either, do you?" I made my way back to the bed. She was looking at me as if I were mad.

I said, "Nancy, dear Nancy."

"Becky," she corrected.

"Becky," I said. "What frequency are you on? There's only the two of us, no one else is here. I looked. There's just you, just me. And it's a little late to get approval from your mother. Back in the bar you told me she was dead."

This time she didn't giggle. She sighed. She put her drink down. She looked up at me and said, "Yeah, but I bet she's turning around in her grave."

"Yeah," I said. "And we are still here. What are you going to do about it?"

The Blondes in My Life

by Jerry Finkelstein, copyright 2012

I knew Madeleine Carroll was beautiful even before she took off her glasses in The 39 Steps. And when she untied her hair I knew she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Hitchcock was famous for movies filled with suspense but I went to see them for his blondes: Tippi Hendren, trapped in a telephone booth, viciously attacked by a sky full of birds; Eva Marie Saint, in high heels and a tight dress, climbing over the nose of George Washington at Mt. Rushmore. Grace Kelly, I’ll never forgive Hitchcock for putting her in harm’s way in Rear Window.

There were other blondes, of course. Lana Turner, was there anyone more blonde, more dangerous? The blonde goddess, dressed in white, the most beautiful woman in the whole world. Who could compare? Beauty, in King Kong, didn’t come close.

There were no blondes in my neighborhood. The streets were filed with dark haired Jews, Italians and Greeks. The Irish were miles away, it was a long walk. Redheads were rare, you didn’t go looking for Rita Hayworth down the block or across the street. Your dates were never more adventurous than a show downtown and maybe a dinner afterwards. You went steady and sex happened and it was fun, but it was never with the hot, smoldering looks of Barbara Stanwyck in a blonde wig. There was never a sense of real danger, like there she is facing you, telling you how much she loves you but there is a gun in her hand and she’s pointing it straight at you. Let’s face it, it’s never like that in real life. In real life you settle.

But that’s what movies are for, right? Movies, the stuff that dreams are made of. And they’re the dreams that money can buy. Madeleine Carroll, she had me then back in 1935. She’s got me still, along with the rest of the blondes, spellbound.

You Must Return the Book

by Jerry Finkelstein, copyright 2011

You must return the book!

That was my sister trying to get me to return a book to the library that was 22 days late. It was before she went to nursing school at Bellevue, before she got TB and was sent to an Upstate New York sanitarium for convalescent care. Her letters from there at Saranac Lake were about her new found crush on a writer she had just met, Walker Percy, a fellow TB patient. In minute detail she wrote of his tastes in reading and music and art. I didn't take any of this seriously. After all, she was once in love with Tom Mix.  After Percy there was Glenn Ford.

You must return the book!

After all these years I still hear her voice. Soft. Raspy. Persistent. Persuasive. I loved the book, I said, and I will never let it go. But she could be persuasive. She was smart, read lots of books and spoke with the voice of authority. Like the time I was resisting taking a high school chemistry course. She said, What kind of a person will you be if you don't know about the elements of life? I took the course. I flunked it.

There's her voice again, always reasonable. She appealed to my love of books and the wonderful stories in them. Did I really want to deprive other lovers of books the story of this book? No, of course not. She had me.

I walked the 14 blocks to the storefront that was the library. It was snowing and it was cold. It was a hard walk. I didn't need my sister to walk along with me or be Big Sister when I paid up at the library. I was all of eight years old and I could do it all by myself. Something momentous was about to happen. I walked right up to the desk, got the book out from under my sweater and, still holding on to it I put it on the desk in front of the librarian. And then I let it go.

When I did that I knew my sister had just saved my life.

These People

by Jerry Finkelstein, copyright 2011

Why do people insist on showing off the pictures of their grandchildren? They never let up. Everywhere and every time, without being asked, they reach for their wallets or cell phones and shove the pictures into your hands. Their faces are smiling, as you might expect, but they are also glowing with absolute pride and joy. I don’t get it.

These people never ask you if you are interested in the latest addition to their clan. The picture of the baby, in any event, is interchangeable with any other picture of a baby but that doesn’t seem to matter. You are considered rude if you point out the physiological similarities among the newborn. And you are considered downright offensive if you show any lack of interest in their adored darlings. Never mind about your feelings, they are beside the point of the offering up of their grandchildren.

They just do it and as they do it an interesting sociological dynamic is soon evident: The doing it serves as a cue for all others gathered around to offer up their pictures of their grandchildren. Mind you, no one asked anyone to see these pictures. Is anyone here really interested in anybody else’s kids? Suddenly, I’m invaded by a barrage of cell phones and paper children. Sometimes I do not know most of these people, I’ve just been introduced or they are strangers in line in front of me paying their bill at Friendly’s. It doesn’t matter if I know them or not. What does matter is that I ooh and ahh and say warm and lovely things about the blurry, badly lit kid on the tiny monitor. The day is coming soon when I will have courage enough to be honest and say, I wouldn’t show this one around, if I were you.

From Plotters Ink

Millie is Remembered

by Jerry Finkelstein , copyright 2016

The thing about Millie was her smile. It wasn't a killer smile, it wasn't a Julia Roberts smile that lights up the sky. It was just an ordinary smile, reserved, somewhat slight, just enough to open her mouth a bit and show off her white teeth. It was the way she did it that got you. Her eyes seemed to brighten at first and then she looked straight at you, a stare really, like a deer caught in the lights of a speeding car. But there she was, a nice kid really, the youngest of our bunch, walking in, saying hello everybody, giving hugs, giving out her homemade cookies, telling us about the good news she just heard from the hospital.

Not much to say, really. Smiles a lot. Hugs a lot. Touches a lot too. Like from out of nowhere she's scratching your back. Or her fingers go walking up and down your arm. So you move your arm away and you look at her and say, Everything all right? She looks right back at you and smiles or giggles and shows her teeth.

I look over the small crowd and wonder did anyone know her beyond the hello and the smile and the giggles and her bag of cookies? You didn't get much out of her when she talked. She worked in some office, doing what exactly? She lived, where? Her only family is her brother. Anyone know him? Is he here today?

My turn? Okay. Yeah, Millie did smile a lot. She was smiling even when she told me about her treatments. And her stories about her months in rehabilitation were really funny, even I laughed.

Millie didn't laugh. She just smiled and giggled. I'm sure she was smiling when they were wheeling her in for her surgery.

Me? I'm a bit pissed off. You came into my life, Millie, with a smile and a few cookies. You said hello, and that was it?

I wanted more.

Such Good Friends

by Jerry Finkelstein, copyright 2016

  

The white carnation fell, hit the side of the casket and landed in the dirt. She sighed.  It was not the intended destination. Judy came up to her quickly and put her own flower into Clara’s hand. “Here,” she said, “You can throw another one….” Clara shook her head no and let Judy’s carnation drop to the ground.

Clara was tired. She was tired all week and she was tired now. After tending to the staff at the Home and standing all morning at the line kissing family, greeting friends, strangers really, she seemed to have used up all her energy. Not enough anyway to stretch out her hand and throw a single flower on a grave.

The minister nodded to Judy and Judy started a prayer. Clara wasn’t listening.

She turned and glanced up the hill. Jerome made it. She wasn’t sure if he’d be here. Planes in Chicago were being cancelled because of the storm. But there he was. Late but here. Nothing was going to keep him from his father. Later on, Jerome told his mother that Tanya couldn’t come, she hated funerals. She’s at home, the children are with her. “Everything all right?” Jerome held his mother’s hand and said, “Of course.”

Now, at the gravesite, her son near, she felt a little more comfortable with herself.

But she was still tired.

The line had snaked around the room, out into a corridor and into another room, some family, lots of friends. That’s what they said when they came up to Clara. “A friend. I am so sorry.” “From years ago, a friend. I am so sorry.”  “I worked in the same building he did. A friend, so sorry.” Or “An old old friend, I am so so sorry. I didn’t know.  No one called me. I read the notice in the paper.” And some of these friends held on to both of her hands and said, “You know, life goes on.” And they smiled as they walked away. Everybody was so sorry.

Clara didn’t know he had so many friends. But she was glad they showed up, in remembrance and to help her feel tired. Tired enough to help her miss her mark at the grave. Tired enough to feel nothing when the carnation landed in the dirt. All that was going to change now. She almost smiled. Her son was coming down the hill.