"I don't want no more talk about dying and funerals, you hear?" he shouted with finality, pausing to huff with slack lips, and promptly transgressed his own injunction with his inflamed and mottled face aimed mainly at Sid. "You want to know about dying and funerals? I'll tell you about dying and funerals. In my day—" he sputtered to another halt, pointing a trembling finger in blazing frustration while he battled for breath to continue, and found pushed upon him immediately from all sides plates of cakes and cookies and pitchers of coffee and tea, which he batted away with the backs of both hands, emitting wild and sibilant incoherent objections while his arms flapped—"in my day, we didn't push people away from their children and their grandchildren when they began to be old. They died near their homes and their families. Like your mother did. And your mother's mother, she died in my house, and my own mother, in my brother Meyer's house she died when we brought her here. Today you wouldn't even bring me here, would you? She was almost ninety and she couldn't see, and her hands and face shook like Jell-O, but we kept her till the end. With bundles they came and slept on the floor
299
until someplace else they could find, like we did in my brother Meyer's house. You and Rosie should remember, if you want to, and maybe Esther. Your mother's brothers and sisters I took in too, even when I didn't like them. And when they were sick and dying we didn't send them away to condominiums and nursing homes. We stayed together, even when we couldn't stand each other. Some sons I got. Once I could break your back with my belt buckle or a clothes hanger if I wanted to, and I never did. Now I'm sorry I didn't. Now you try to move me here and there like a dumb baby that don't know what you're doing, but I see what you're doing, I still got something up here. I got money of my own and can stay where I want. Only my daughter Joannie in California treats me with love and respect while I'm still alive. Once a month she calls me, without fail. That's when!" His voice rose suddenly with a hard, vindictive laugh. "When I'm toyt, geshtor-ben! Sure, that's when I'll go back to Florida and you can buy me my condominium, when I'm dead and ready for d'rerd, and that's where I want you to put me when I die, in the kitchen under the table!"
The old man's eyes were spilling over with tears when he stopped, and Gold did not think he had ever seen a sicker group of listeners. Gold defended himself against anything like shame or penitence with the lurking suspicion his father himself had not experienced one spark of the feelings he had stirred in the others, and the proof was not long in coming.
"You always said you wanted to retire to Florida," Sid defended himself feebly.
"Now I don't. Ich fur nisht." The old man surveyed them all defiantly with a look of spleen. "I ain't going back till I'm good and ready, which might be never."
"You promised," reminded Harriet. "You gave us your word."
"So what?" answered Gold's father and cocked his head to the side while exploding in a fit of triumphant laughter which ended quite suddenly, and Gold could
300
not imagine a more crafty or disreputable figure anywhere on earth. "Why must I smoke these cheap cigars?" he complained with whining belligerence. "Why can't you buy me a good one for my anniversary if you really like me? And I don't want no more talk about cemetery plots either, no more. That subject is. closed."
"My father," began Gold's stepmother with queenly dignity, drawing a very deep breath and pursuing her work with her knitting needles as she spoke, "gave me a rather large and very beautiful cemetery plot as part of my wedding present. That was a nice stitch, wasn't it? Isn't this a beautiful stitch? Look, everybody. Everybody look at my beautiful stitch. There was room for eight of us, and I, in my childish innocence, honestly believed it was enough for a lifetime. Oh, how young and inexperienced I was. I once was a virgin, you know. When my first husband died, my real husband, that is, not him, he was buried there, of course, in the place of honor, and I looked forward so to the happiness we would share when I joined him there. Sometimes I could hardly wait. Shortly afterward, my husband's father died, my father-in-law, that is, and simple decency required me to honor my mother-in-law's appeal to put him near his firstborn son when she explained how much it might mean to both, even though they did not get along in life. Well, no sooner was he interred there, it seemed, than she passed away too, and I thought it only suitable that she be placed alongside her husband and my husband. I know I would want that if the situations were reversed. Three of my places were gone in almost the twinkling of an eye, and just as I was catching my breath, dear me, my husband's brother dropped. He was something of a spendthrift and a ne'er-do-well, and since he had neglected to acquire adequate land for himself and his loved ones, and since so much of his family was already there, I thought it a cruelty to turn him away and send him off God knows where to spend the rest of his days
301
with strangers. So I took him in too. Then his wife died, of grief or kidney failure, they say, and next a woman he had been seeing secretly all his life expired of love and loneliness or drink—her physician told us in professional confidence that it is often impossible to tell the difference between the ravages of deep love and cheap whiskey on the vital organs—and had no place else to go. I let her in too, although I'm still not easy in my mind about the propriety of allowing all three to lie in the same bed, so to speak, although it's hardly what we would choose to call a bed of roses, is it? That made six. Well, I can't say how the seventh person got in or find out who he even is, but someone is there—of that there is no doubt—and that leaves room for just one more, Julius, me, which is why I'm trying to find out where you'd like to be. If you do want to come with me rather than with your first wife, I'm sure we can find a lovely spot for you very close by, perhaps even in walking distance, if we begin looking how. I know I would be happy with that, for I'm not sure how comfortable I'll be surrounded by so many in-laws and one person I don't know at all. Please let me know while you still have time to decide. Would one of you sweet children bring me a clean glass of water? I am dry from talking, and I'll need just the tiniest sip if I'm to continue."
The rush to the doors of the dining room would have demolished a house less sturdily constructed. Gold flew past the kitchen and came to a stop at the bar beside Max, who had to squint to see him. Max, with his diabetic condition, ought not to have been drinking at all. The pouches under the sad man's eyes were tinged with blue and he had the listless and cadaverous demeanor of a man who had given up.
"How are things, Max?" Gold inquired squeamishly.
"Fine, fine, Bruce, very good, good," said Max. "Not so good, I guess. Norma broke up with her fellow in San Francisco and thinks she wants to go back to graduate school to get her degree after she takes
302
another half year off. She was down in Los Angeles a week or month ago and had lunch or dinner with Joannie. I think they had a fight or an argument. She says Joannie was mean to her."
"Joannie wouldn't be mean."
"Maybe Norma was a little touchy, I guess." Max shuffled nervously. "We saw your name in the papers again, Bruce. Rose showed it to everyone in her office. Maybe if the postal rates go up we'll get a really big raise, do you think?" asked this sallow, saturnine, ailing man who had once scored second highest in the state on a Civil Service examination for a job in the Post Office Department and was glorified for one day by a paragraph and a picture in the Brooklyn section of the New York Sunday News. "Wouldn't you say that was only fair?" He used to give Gold dimes. "It's a nice party, isn't it?"
It was a dismal party—Muriel was a despotic hostess, and she and Ida had been clashing all evening—and Gold sought refuge in one of the many small television dens with which the house was appointed. He was grossly disheartened when Muriel's daughter followed him there with the request that he speak at her high school.
"My teacher isn't sure what you do but she says everyone will be interested in hearing you."
"Please tell her I'm not doing any speaking at this time, Cheray," Gold said tactfully.
The older of the two girls, Simone, had dressed up garishly and departed before dinner to watch television with a girl friend across the street with whom she was dieting.
"Do you like this new purse too, Uncle Bruce?" the younger asked him now with her thin, somewhat inane, nervous laugh. "Mommy bought it for me also but she doesn't want Daddy to know, so please don't tell him. Or do you like the other one better with these shoes?"
"Why don't you show it to your Aunt Rose and Aunt Esther?" he replied after a lengthy silence. It was
303
painful to Gold to observe how Muriel had influenced her daughters to disparage their father, and he felt compassion for Victor. Like Muriel, both girls were heavily rouged and wore large rings and many thin bracelets on both arms. "They'll know better than me, and I know they'll be pleased."
"They're both so old." The girl made an unpleasant face. "I'd rather sit here with you and learn things. You're young. Mommy doesn't like Aunt Joannie. We haven't seen her for years."
"You should go talk to them anyway, Cheray," Gold chided soberly, "and to Grandpa too. All of them love you very much. And you really shouldn't make fun of your father, especially to other people. He's really a very generous man."
The girl checked him with another gesture of distaste. "He probably doesn't even notice. Do you like this skirt better with these shoes and blouse or the other blue one, Uncle Bruce? Mommy likes us to look nice when we go out with her and her friends." The girl had the jittery habit of masking her mouth with a hand and giggling before disclosing anything she deemed of unusual interest. "I go out a lot with her and Simone on Saturdays now. I even go with them to the racetrack sometimes, but she doesn't want Daddy to know, so please don't tell him. Mommy knows lots of men and women who are much more fun than Daddy, but she doesn't want him to know, so please don't tell him. Where are you going?"
Gold explained he was rejoining the rest of the family and ambled away with a barren smile and the dreary intuition that the day was fast approaching when, at Victor's tearful bidding, he would have to elucidate for Muriel the distinction between a whore and a cunt and illustrate how it was possible to be one without also being the other. And an uncomprehending Victor would beg him to continue reasoning with her to save his marriage, his children, and his home. Muriel, at fifty-two, Gold saw, was copying Joannie at eigh-
304
teen, and envy, not disapproval, was at bottom of the unrelenting enmity she still bore the wayward youngest sister.
It was a cheerless prospect that met Gold's eyes in the large family room, where Ida and Muriel were disagreeing heatedly over the Academy Awards while his father sat hunched over the tuning knob of the television set like a thwarted ghoul, sounding barbaric mutterings at the giant screen as he scavenged through one channel after another in futile hunt of old movies with dead entertainers he knew familiarly.
"Where you been?"
The gruffness of the question annoyed Gold very much. "I've got a slight headache."
"Where?"
"That's a good one," exulted Gold's stepmother.
Gold cursed the frail figure of the genteel woman vilely without moving his lips. In another corner of the room a more hazardous development was unfolding, and Gold was spellbound when he overheard Esther, Rose, and Harriet remonstrating with Belle to accompany him to Washington each time he went. Then, and perhaps only for an instant, Gold knew what was meant when a mind boggled and could have defined the term for Ralph with exactitude.
"A woman belongs with her husband always," Esther was saying with a throb in her voice.
"If only to keep an eye on him," Harriet stressed insidiously.
Belle was evasive. "I won't like it there. Washington is a high-crime area."
"So is New York."
"I'm used to our high crime. I don't know anybody there."
"Bruce will introduce you to all his friends." said Rose.
Gold felt the moment had arrived to intervene discreetly. "You really shouldn't force her, if she doesn't want to go."
305
"You see how much he wants me there?" Belle flashed bitterly in one of her rare manifestations of disagreement. The other women sighed in concert and Belle with embarrassment turned her gaze away from one condoling face after another.
"Besides," said Gold with a fake laugh and a burst of ingenuity, "I have to go to Mexico first. Yes. On a secret cultural mission."
"Mexico?" Scales appeared to fall from Sid's eyes, and he sat up with a keen, tense look. "Mexico City?"
"Acapulco."
"Acapulco?" The word issued from Harriet like a primordial snarl. "What's in Acapulco?"
"Acapulco," answered Gold in a baritone of pedantry, "is rapidly becoming the new cultural center for the entire country. My assignment there is officially secret and I can't talk about it."
"In that case, let's talk about something else," said Sid, as though springing in to help, and Gold felt fervently relieved. "Let's talk about geology. Are vultures blind or aren't they?"
A blow to the groin could not have brought Gold closer to tears. There was little restraint in his reply. "Sid," he began in a flying start nothing in existence could obstruct, "there are only a few holidays left now and we got six families who want to play host to them, so there ain't enough meals to begin with. There's Christmas and Thanksgiving, the two Passover nights, there's Rosh Hashonah and Purim maybe, and sometimes Easter, sometimes New Year's Day, and here and there a birthday Sunday or anniversary, and that's about all, except for weddings and funerals and the very few Bar Mitzvahs left, thank God. You do this every time, don't you? Now, you do this one more time, Sid, one more time, you fat, vegetating, overfed, lazy, smirking son of a bitch—"
"Victor! Kill him! He's ruining my party!"
"—and this family—"
"Leave him alone!" shrieked Belle.
306
"—and this family, you imbecilic old prick, may never get together for dinner again, you slimy, sneaky, invidious bastard."
"FU kill him!" decreed his father with patriarchal prerogative, rising too quickly and massaging a hip that buckled. "Two of you run me across to him."
"Muriel, Muriel," pleaded Gold with hands clasped religiously. "I'm sorry to ruin your party, but don't you understand what he's doing? He never liked you either. He's been doing it all my life. He's jealous, that's why. Ida—explain to her," he entreated and annulled the suggestion with a sour face when he recalled that from a diplomatic standpoint, he was selecting the worst of available advocates. "Muriel, it isn't geology and vultures are not blind! Soon he'll be hitting me with three-part statements of misinformation and I'll never be able to catch up." Gold ended with a sob.
"So it isn't geology," said Sid. "I was only trying to change the subject to do a favor for my kid brother."
"And stop babying me, goddammit," Gold exploded and moved in brutally to flay Sid and expose his ignorance to the others once and for all. "Okay, wise guy, we'll see what you know. Morticians!" Gold heard himself exclaim somewhat madly. It was not how he had intended to begin. "Where are they? Why don't we know any? How come we never meet anyone else who knows one? Fish. Do they cook the salmon and tuna before they put it into the can or after? How?"
"It's cooked?" asked his father.
"It's raw?" answered Gold, taking a leaf from his father's book.
"Then you tell us. You're the one we sent to college."
"That's not science," Harriet informed Gold with scorn.
"Sure." Gold's father placidly unwrapped a cigar. "Ask him about hot and cold."
"What's heat?" Gold snapped at Sid.
"The absence of cold."
307
"What's cold?"
"The absence of heat."
"That makes no sense. One's wrong."
"Which one?"
"It makes sense to me," said Irv. There were nods from the others.
"I like to talk topics," said Gold's father, majestically stri
king a match.
Gold was undeterred. "Why does a match go out when you blow on it?"
Sid said, "You're blowing away the heated gases that keep the temperature up and the match burning."
"Then why does a log burn brighter when you blow on the embers?"
"The heat is in the embers, kid, not in the gases. You're creating the heated gases when you blow the oxygen on."
"Why does water expand when it freezes, while everything else contracts when it gets colder?"
"It doesn't." Sid grinned.
"It doesn't?"
"It doesn't."
"You damn fool," said Gold with contempt. "You've seen ice cubes in a tray, haven't you? The water gets bigger, doesn't it?"
"It isn't water any more, kid. It's ice."
"Why does the ice get bigger?"
"It doesn't. The tray gets smaller. Metal contracts when it freezes. You should know that."
"Why doesn't the water get smaller when it freezes?" Gold's voice was rising to a shout.
"Because it's ice."
"Why doesn't the ice get smaller?"
"Smaller than what?"
"Than before."