Good as Gold

  Ida asked Gold, "What's new?"

  "Nothing."

  "He's writing a book," said Belle.

  "Really?" said Rose.

  "Another book?" scoffed his father.

  "That's nice," said Esther.

  "Yes," said Belle.

  "What's it about?" Muriel asked Gold.

  "It's about the Jewish experience," said Belle.

  "That's nice," said Ida.

  "About what?" demanded his father.

  "About the Jewish experience," answered Sid, and then called across the table to Gold. "Whose?"

  "Whose what?" said Gold warily.

  "Whose Jewish experience?"

  "I haven't decided yet."

  "He's writing some articles too," said Belle.

  "Most of it is going to be very general," Gold added with perceptible reluctance.

  "What's it mean?" Gold's father wanted to be told right then.

  "It's a book about being Jewish," said Belle.

  Gold's father snorted. "What does he know about being Jewish?" he roared. "He wasn't even born in Europe."

  "It's about being Jewish in America," said Belle.

  Gold's father was fazed only a second. "He don't know so much about that either. I been Jewish in America longer than him too."

  "They're paying him money," Belle argued persistently. Gold wished she would stop.

  "How much you getting?" demanded Gold's father.

  "A lot," said Belle.

  "How much? A lot to him maybe ain't so much to others. Right, Sid?"

  "You said it, Pop."

  "How much you getting?"

  "Twenty thousand dollars," said Belle.

  25

  The amount, Gold could see, made a stunning impact, especially on his father, who looked unaffect­edly disappointed. Gold himself would have deferred naming a figure. It must seem a fortune to Max and Rose and Esther, and even, perhaps, to Victor and Irv. They would see only a windfall, and forget the work.

  "That is nice," said Rose.

  "That ain't so much," Gold's father grumbled dejec­tedly. "I made more than that in my time."

  And lost more too, Gold thought.

  "Some people write books for the movies and make much more," Harriet observed in a disheartened way, while Sid chuckled softly.

  Gold opened his mouth to retaliate when Belle said, "Well, that's only a start. And five thousand of that is for research. It isn't even charged against the guaran­tee."

  "That's nice," said Esther quickly, eager to come to Gold's support. "I bet that's very nice."

  "What does that mean?" asked Sid seriously.

  "It's hard to explain," said Belle.

  "No, it isn't."

  "That's what you,told me."

  "You wouldn't listen when I tried."

  "Don't fight," Harriet flittered in quickly with mal­ice.

  "It means," Gold said, addressing himself mainly to Sid and Irv, "that five thousand is charged off as a publishing expense instead of to me, even if I don't spend it. I can make that much more in royalties from book sales."

  "Isn't that what I said?" said Belle.

  "That sounds like a very good provision," Esther's elderly beau, Milt, observed ever so diffidently, and Gold remembered he was an accountant and would understand too.

  "Bruce," Irv ventured, putting a thumb and forefin­ger to his chin. Since his dental practice had ceased growing, Irv had developed a tic in his right cheek that

  26

  often gave him the appearance of smiling inexplicably. "You aren't going to write about any of us, are you?"

  "No, of course not," Gold responded. "Why would I do anything like that?"

  A wave of relief went around the table. Then all faces fell.

  "Why not?" demanded his father. "Ain't we good enough?"

  Gold's voice still tended to weaken in argument with the old man. "It's not that kind of book."

  "No?" bellowed his father, rearing up an inch or so and stabbing at Gold an index finger that curved like a talon. "Well, I've got news for you, smart guy. You ain't gonna do it so hot without me. It's what I told you then, and what I told you now. It's what I told you from the beginning. You ain't the man for the job." He changed in a second from choleric belligerence to serene self-confidence and sat back with his head cocked to the side. "Good, Sid?" he asked, turning and looking up.

  "You said it, Pop."

  Julius Gold allowed his eyelids to lower in a look of narcissistic contentment.

  Those two bastards, Gold told himself, reaching with misplaced hostility for the bowl of mashed potatoes and onions to ladle himself out another large helping. And they never even liked each other.

  "Did you ever hear from the White House again?" asked his sister Rose, beaming.

  "No," said Belle, before Gold could reply, and Harriet looked pleased.

  "But he heard from them twice," said Esther. "He got two phone calls."

  "It wasn't really the White House," Gold corrected. "It was from a friend I went through graduate school with who works in the White House."

  "That's the same thing," said Ida. "He's in the White House, isn't he?"

  "I don't know where he was when he made the phone call." Gold's tone was faintly sarcastic.

  27

  "In the White House," said Belle, with no change of expression. "Ralph Newsome."

  "Thanks," said Gold. "There was some chance I might forget his name."

  "I never heard of him," said Harriet.

  "Well, he's on the President's staff," said Muriel, and turned to Gold. "Isn't he?"

  Gold plunged his face into his plate and was silent.

  "I went past the White House once when I was a sweet and very pretty little girl up from Richmond," Gold's stepmother recalled. "It looked dirty."

  "But he said he liked your book, didn't he?" Esther recalled.

  "Not my book," Gold explained uncomfortably.

  "His review of the President's book," said Belle.

  "I'll bet the President liked it too," said Rose.

  "He did," said Belle. "They offered him a job."

  "The President?" asked Ida.

  "They did not," said Gold irately. "Not the Presi­dent. I was only asked if I'd ever given any thought to working in Washington. That's all."

  "That sounds like a job to me," said Irv.

  "You see?" said Belle.

  "What'd you say?" asked Max eagerly.

  "He said he would think about it," said Belle.

  "I told you not to tell them."

  "I don't care," Belle answered. "They're your family. You said you'd probably take it if the job was a good one."

  "You said you wouldn't go," said Gold.

  "I won't," said Belle.

  "Twenty thousand?" Gold's father suddenly ex­claimed with a gargantuan guffaw. "Me they would give a million!"

  Ashes, Gold grieved wildly, chewing away at his mouthful of mashed potatoes and bread more vigorous­ly than he realized. The food! In my mouth to ashes the food is turning! It has been this way with my father almost all my life.

  From the beginning, Gold ruminated now. When I

  28

  said I was thinking of going into business, he told me to stay in school. When I decided to stay in school, he told me to go into business. "Dope. Why waste time? It's not what you know. It's who you know." Some father! If I said wet, he'd say dry. When I said dry, he said wet. If I said black, he said white. If I said white, he said . . . niggers, they're ruining the neighborhood, one and all, and that's it. Fartig. That was when he was in real estate. Far back, that peremptory cry of Fartig would instantly create an obedient silence that every­body in the family would be in horror of breaking, including Gold's mother.

  It was no secret to anyone that his father considered Gold a schmuck. It would be unfair to say his father was disappointed in him, for he had always considered Gold a schmuck.

  "From the beginning," his father showed off again with inverted familial pr
ide, as though Gold was elsewhere, "I knew he would never amount to much. And was I right? It's a good thing his mother never lived to see the day he was born."

  "Pop," Sid corrected him tactfully. "Bruce was already in high school when Mom died."

  "And a finer woman never lived," responded Gold's father, nodding for a moment in bewitched recollec­tion, then glaring at Gold vindictively as though her death at forty-nine had been his fault. "Or died," he added faintly.

  Once when Gold was visiting in Florida, his father drew him across a street just to meet some friends and introduced him by saying, "This is my son's brother. The one that never amounted to much."

  His father's lasting appraisal of Gold—as of almost every other human in the world, including Sid—was that he lacked business sense. Despite his father's unbroken record of failure in more occupations and business ventures than Gold knew about, he judged himself a model of splendid achievements and rare acumen, and he never shrank from presenting himself is a shrewd observer of everyone else's affairs, includ-

  29

  ing those of Sid and General Motors. One of his more penetrating entrepreneurial judgments this year about American Telephone and Telegraph was that "they got no talent in the front office."

  "They're big, all right," said Julius Gold, "but they don't know what to do. If I owned all those telephones, oh boy—no business would run without me."

  His visit to New York this year, ostensibly for dental work, had commenced in May. A staunchly irreligious man, he now seemed oddly determined to remain through all the Jewish holidays, and he kept disclosing new ones of which the others had not heard.

  "He must be reading the fucking Talmud," Gold had grumbled to Belle when his father cited Shmini Atzereth. Belle pretended not to hear. "Or else he's making them up."

  In Harriet, Gold found a kindred antipathy that surpassed his own. "What's the matter?" she had muttered snidely the week of her father-in-law's arriv­al. "They have no dentists in Miami?"

  It was a fragile and temporary alliance, Gold knew, for Harriet had been methodically putting distance between herself and the family for some time, as though in thrifty preparation for some clear and farsighted eventuality. Harriet had a widowed mother and an older unmarried sister to help support.

  Gold's father was five feet two and subject to unexpected attacks of wisdom. "Make money!" he might shout suddenly, apropos of nothing, and his stepmother would add liturgically, "You should all listen to your father."

  "Make money!" he shouted suddenly now, as though sprung from a trance with a burning revelation. "That's the only good thing I ever learned from the Christians," he continued with the same volatile fervor. "Roast beef is better than boiled beef, that's another good thing. And sirloin steak is better than shoulder steak. Lob­sters are dirty. They ain't got scales and crawl. They can't even swim. And that's it. Fartig."

  30

  "You should listen to your father more." It was on Gold that the reprimanding gaze of his stepmother rested last, longest, and most severely.

  "And what does he want me to do?"

  "Whatever he does," answered his father, "is wrong. One thing," he said, "one thing I always taught my children," he went on, as though addressing somebody else's, "was not the value of a dollar, but the value of a thousand dollars, ten thousand. And all of them— except one"—in fantastic disregard of the facts and to the visible embarrassment of the others, he paused to look with murderous disgust at Gold—"have learned that lesson and now got plenty, especially Sid here, and little Joannie." His eyes misted over at mention of his youngest daughter, who had bolted from the fold so early. "I always knew how to advise. The upshot is, that when I get old"—Gold could no longer believe his ears as he heard this preposterous braggart of eighty-two declaiming—"when I get old, nobody will ever have to support me but you children."

  Gold, his temper rising, felt no compunction about lashing back.

  "Well, I don't like to boast," he replied roughly, "but when I was with the Foundation seven years ago-"

  "You ain't with them any more!" his father cut him short.

  Gold surrendered with a shudder and pretended to search his plate as Rose, Muriel, and all the brothers-in-law clapped in delight and Esther and Ida rocked with laughter. Gold had the terrible presentiment that some might leap onto their chairs and hurl hats into the air. His father again sat back slowly with that smile of self-enchantment and let his eyes fall closed. Gold was constrained to smile. He would not want anyone to guess how truly crushed he felt. And then, Sid spoke.

  "Behold a child," Sid intoned rabbinically without warning, as though musing aloud upon a slice of Esther's stuffed intestine held on a fork halfway

  31

  between his plate and his mouth, and Gold felt his spirits sink further, "by nature's kindly law, pleased by a rattle, tickled by a straw."

  Gold saw in a flash that he was totally ruined. It was check, mate, match, and defeat from the opening move. He was caught, whether he took the bait or declined, and he could only marvel in dejection as the rest of the stratagem unfolded around him as symmetri­cally and harmoniously as ripples of water.

  The others were struck with wonder by Sid's elo­quence and pantheistic wisdom.

  "That sounds okay to me," Victor murmured.

  "Me too," said Max.

  "It's nice," said Esther. "Isn't it?"

  "Yes," Rose agreed. "Beautiful."

  "See how smart my first son is?" said Gold's father.

  "You should listen to your older brother more," said "- Gold's stepmother, and aimed the point of her knitting needle at Gold's eyes.

  "It really is beautiful," Ida assented reverently. Ida, the shrewish schoolteacher, was considered the intelli­gent one; Gold, the college professor, was a novelty. Ida looked Gold fully in the face. "Isn't it, Bruce?"

  There was no escape.

  "Yes," said Belle.

  Gold was trapped two, three, four, maybe five or six ways. If he mentioned Alexander Pope, he would be parading his knowledge. If he didn't, Sid would, unmasking him as an ignoramus. If he corrected the prepositional errors, he would appear pedantic, quar­relsome, jealous. If he gave no answer at all, he would be insulting to Ida, who, with the others, was awaiting some reply. It was no fair way, he sulked, to treat a middle-aged, Phi Beta Kappa, cum laude graduate of Columbia who was a doctor of philosophy and had recently been honored with praise from the White House and the promise of consideration for a high-level position. Oh, Sid, you fucking cocksucker, lamented the doctor of philosophy and prospective governmental appointee. You nailed me again.

  32

  "Pope," he decided at length to mumble unwillingly, keeping his face steadfastly down toward his portion of Ida's meatballs.

  "What?" snapped his father.

  "He said Tope,'" Sid informed him congenially.

  "What's it mean?"

  "It's by Alexander Pope," Gold asserted loudly. "Not by Sid."

  "See how smart our kid brother is?" Sid announced, chewing contentedly.

  "He didn't say it was by him," Harriet pointed out nicely in defense of her husband. "Did he?"

  "Isn't it just as beautiful anyway?" Ida reasoned with him pedagogically.

  "Yes," said Belle.

  "Is it any less beautiful because it's by Alexander Pope and not by Sid?" asked Irv.

  Belle shook her head firmly, as did Victor, Milt, and Max.

  Gold found them all abhorrent. "The implication was there," he exclaimed sullenly. "And the preposi­tions are wrong."

  "Brucie, Brucie, Brucie," entreated Sid generously, the essence of tolerance and reasonableness. "Are you going to be sore at me just because of a couple of prepositions?" There was a murmurous shaking of heads. "We'll make them right if you're going to be so finicky."

  "Sid, you're fucking me over again!" Gold shouted. "Aren't you?"

  The next few moments were exciting. The women averted their eyes, and Victor, who did not like bad language ever in front o
f women, reddened further, as though keeping his temper in check, and straightened menacingly. Then Gold's father jumped to his feet with an incredulous shriek. "He said fuck?" His voice ascended to such shrillness that he sounded like a chicken in a frenzy. "Fuck, he said? I'll kill him! I'll break his bones! Someone walk me over to him."

  "All of you leave Bruce alone," Ida ordered sternly,

  33

  restoring order. "This is my house, and I won't permit any fighting."

  "That's right," entreated Rose, a large, kindly woman with a saddle of freckles across her nose. "Bruce is probably still very tired."

  "From his trip to Washington," said Esther.

  "Wilmington," said Belle.

  Sid, licking his lips with a look of triumph, reached with his fingers for a second piece of Harriet's honey cake.

  In the cab going home, Gold had heartburn and a headache. He could remember meals far back when his father reigned like the absolute tyrant he was, pointing the lethal scepter of his finger at whatever he wanted passed to him, and everyone else would hasten to ferry everything in that area to him. "Not that! That!" he would roar. He would not lower himself to specify, and the challenge was further complicated by the fact that he was mildly cross-eyed. Gold's father would toss cups, saucers, plates, and serving bowls, empty or full, from the table to the floor if he spied a chip or a hairline crack in any of the porcelain. "I don't eat from broken china," he would proclaim like an affronted monarch. Gold could remember his mother and sisters inspecting all the dishes beforehand to segregate those defective ones that must never come before his scrutiny.

  "The thing is," Gold recalled in a manner quietly morose, "they used to hate each other. Sid ran away from home once because he couldn't take him any more. He was still in high school and stayed away a whole summer."