“No, Ma, no,” he said, and felt a touch like pain. She was so assured, with her tall carriage, and good clothes or what remained of them, her books and her courses. He thought: Has this been inside her all the time? We don’t know anything about anybody, after all.
And it seemed to him as he sat in the cold, white kitchen among the looming white boxes, the tall rectangular bulk of the refrigerator and the lower bulk of the stove, with the chilling glare of the ceiling light in his eyes, that it was an operating room and he was helpless, pinned down, fastened and exposed like a patient on the table.
“Ma, I can’t, I can’t.”
“Can’t leave her?”
He could hardly speak. For a grown man to weep! The thing in his throat was a lump of tears. “Can’t leave her,” he repeated thickly, and closed his eyes.
She was silent. He did not look at her, but he felt a stir of warmth in the air behind him and knew that she was standing very close, not touching. Then she did touch him, her hand stroking his hair.
“Maury, Maury, I’m sorry. Living can be so terribly hard.”
“Now, you wanted to talk to me, Maury?” Pa asked.
They were in his den among his familiar things: cigar smoke, the mahogany humidor and all the photographs of Ma and his children and his own parents, the father in a derby hat with the tiny wife next to him, wearing a plumed hat and an 1880s dress. The globe stood in front of the window. It was Iris’ present. She always gave presents like that, a globe or books or antique maps.
“I suppose Ma has mentioned what I want to talk about,” Maury said.
“She has. But you must know there is really nothing to talk about,” his father said gently. “Not that I refuse to talk. I’m willing to listen.”
Maury began. “What else is there to say but that I love Agatha? I love her so—”
“I’m sorry. Sorry to see your pain.”
“It needn’t be pain. It could be so simple.”
“It’s never simple.”
“It was for you and Ma, wasn’t it?”
“It’s never simple, I tell you. And your mother was a Jewish girl.”
“Pa, tell me, you’re a practical, rational man. Is it so strange for me to be in love with Agatha? She’s such a lovely person. You would really like her. She’s so intelligent and happy and kindhearted.”
“I believe you. I don’t think you would care about anyone who wasn’t all of those things. Still, to marry her—it’s impossible.”
“How can you feel that way and still be such friends with Mr. Malone?”
“Why not? Malone and I understand each other, that’s why were friends. He’s a good Catholic and he expects his children to marry Catholics. And I respect him for it.”
“But why? Really why? You still haven’t explained. I’ll grant that it’s easier not to marry out, but—”
Joseph stood up. “Come,” he said, spinning the globe. “There, that’s Palestine. That’s where it started. We came from there. There we gave the world the Ten Commandments, and if everybody would obey them there would be no trouble. There we gave the Christian world its God. And from there we were burned out and dispossessed and driven here—” his finger made a long sweep across Africa, up into Spain. “And here—” a sweep of the palm across Europe, eastward into Poland and Russia. “And then here, across the Atlantic, and everywhere else you can think of. Africa, Australia—”
“Yes, yes,” Maury said impatiently, “I’ve had a bit of education. I know our history.”
“You know, but you only read the words, you didn’t feel them. Maury, all this history, this wandering, has been written in blood. And it is still being written today, right now, while you and I stand here. Tonight in Germany our people are being tortured for no reason at all and the world does nothing, it doesn’t care. Oh,” he said passionately, “how we have suffered, this People of the Book, this proud, strong people who have enriched the world! My son, we need every soul we can hold on to. There are so few of us and we need each other. How can you turn your back on your people? How can you?”
He was moved, and angered that he was moved. His father had never been so eloquent. It was not like him, silent man that he was, not gifted with words. Tears had even come into his eyes as he spoke. He has no right to do this to me, Maury thought, and he knew he was losing the battle, knew he had already lost it.
He made one more try. “Pa, I wouldn’t turn my back. I wouldn’t change. Did you think I would convert? I’ll stay what I am and Agatha will stay what she is.”
“And your children? What will they be? I’ll tell you: nothing! And you ask me, you come in casually and ask me to accept, as if it were only a small thing, that I should live to see my grandson, son of my son, a nothing? Why don’t you come in and ask for my right arm? Why don’t you?”
“Pa, will you at least meet Agatha? Let me bring her here. Then you can talk to her and—”
“No, no, I tell you. There’s no sense in it!”
“Then you’re no different from her people. You’re just as much of a bigot.”
“What? No difference between the murderers and the murdered? You must be crazy! So her people are against it too, are they?”
“Of course! What did you think?”
“So you see, you see how impossible it is? Oh, Maury, listen to me, I want to reach your heart and your mind. Believe me, there is nothing a human being can’t get over. You don’t think so now, but take it on faith, please do. Parents lose children, husbands and wives die and hearts break, but they go on living. And eventually the break heals.
“Believe me now, you’ll suffer for a couple of months, I know you will. But then it’ll be over and you’ll meet a fine girl of your own kind, and she’ll meet another man, this Agatha. It’ll be better for her, too.”
Something burst in Maury. “I don’t want to hear that! Don’t dare tell me that!”
“Maurice, don’t raise your voice to me. I’m trying to help you, but this sort of thing won’t do any good.”
He went to the door. He wanted to break something, throw the lamp to the floor, smash things. God damn world! God damn life! “What will you do if we get married anyway?” he asked.
His father’s face looked sick. It looked green. “Maurice,” he said very low, “I hope you won’t do that. I hope for your mother’s sake, for mine and for us all that you won’t do that. I beg you, I warn you, don’t bring the unthinkable to pass.”
Agatha was tearful on the telephone. “I talked to my parents, Maury. Or at least I tried to. They were absolutely horrified, I thought my father had lost his mind, he went into such a tirade. He said he thought I must be insane! I can’t begin to tell you the things he said!”
“I can imagine,” Maury said grimly.
“He went on about our family, our ancestors, and what they stood for and what America stands for, and the church, and all our friends. And he said that if—if I did this I’d be no daughter of his. First my mother cried and then she got furious at me because Daddy turned absolutely white and she thought he was going to have a heart attack. She made me get out of the room. Oh, Maury, how terrible to be married this way, to walk out of your home like this!”
He thought for a moment. “Do you suppose if I spoke to Chris he could talk to them?”
“Oh, Maury, I don’t know. Try it!”
“He’s coming to New York for the weekend. I’ll go see him at his hotel.”
“Oh, yes,” Chris said, “my parents spoke very well of you. ‘A very attractive young man,’ my mother said. I remember her words.”
“Well, then, if they thought well of me, maybe they or you would talk to Aggie’s parents? It would help a lot, I think.”
“I don’t really think it would,” Chris said gently.
“You don’t? Aggie thought it would.”
“Aggie knows better. She’s grasping at straws.”
Maury put his head in his hands. He thought he had spoken so persuasively.
Chris went to the window and looked out for a minute, as if he were making up his mind about something. Then he turned back to the room. “Listen, I have a proposition. Your nerves are pretty bad, one can see that with half an eye. Why don’t you just chuck everything and sail to England with me next week? If money’s a problem I can lend you some. Well go tramping through England and you’ll be born again. What do you say?”
“You don’t understand. You say you want to help me. Then why don’t you give me the help I want? Tell me, Chris. Be honest with me.”
“You mean that?”
“I mean it.”
“Because I don’t approve of the marriage. If I had known about you and Aggie I wouldn’t have let things get this far.”
“Why, Chris, why?”
“Come on, Maury, you’re not that naive. Because you are what you are, that’s why.”
“And in what way am I so different from you?”
“I don’t think you are, but the world thinks so. And you’d be asking Aggie to be the world’s victim along with you.”
“She doesn’t care.”
“She thinks she doesn’t care. Clubs and friends, many of her friends—she’d have to give them all up. Her children would be rejected by people and in places where she’s been welcomed.”
“She doesn’t give a damn, I tell you!”
“She gives more than a damn about her parents! Aggie is very close to them, especially her father. Ever since he had polio she’s been his right hand. I remember when she was a little kid, no more than eight or nine, and she used to help him learn to walk again. It would have broken your heart.”
“And this doesn’t break your heart?”
Chris looked at him, not speaking. Maury opened the door. “My friend. My good friend. Chris. Well, you can go to hell!”
They were married at city hall on a blazing day in July. “You could fry an egg on the sidewalk today,” the clerk said as he stamped their certificate.
In their stifling room at the hotel a fan stirred the air at ten-second intervals. Through the open window came the sound of a record playing “Pagliacci” over and over. They sent downstairs for a meal of overcooked steak and soggy potatoes. It was the most beautiful room, the most sumptuous dinner, the most marvelous music they had ever known.
Aggie took a bottle of wine from her suitcase. “I brought some wine for our wedding toast. Look at the label. Nothing but the best!”
“I don’t know a thing about wines. We never had any in our house.”
“I got used to it, living in France. You drink it there instead of water.”
“Don’t people get drunk?”
“Just a pleasant haze. Your health!” she said.
“And yours, Mrs. Friedman.”
So they drank to each other, pulled the shade and went back to bed, although it was only three in the afternoon.
In the morning, after he was sure that his father had left for work, he telephoned his mother.
“Maury,” she said, “oh, how I want to see you! But I can’t. Your father has forbidden me.” And she cried, “Dear heaven, if only you hadn’t done this! It’s like a morgue here since yesterday. Iris and I, we can scarcely breathe. And your father looks ten years older.”
He was not angry at her. “Good-by, Ma,” he said softly, and hung the receiver up.
Between them they had a little more than four hundred dollars.
“If were very careful,” Maury said, “we can make this last a couple of months. But I’ll have a job long before then.” He felt very strong, very confident.
“I’ll get something too. I can always teach French as a substitute until there’s a permanent opening.”
“Meanwhile, well find the cheapest decent apartment we can until we decide where we want to go permanently.”
Cheerfully, purposefully, they bought newspapers, took subways, and finally found a furnished apartment on the top floor of a two-family house in Queens. The owner was Mr. George Andreapoulis, a polite young Greek-American who had just graduated from law school into the Depression. On a trip to Greece he had gotten a bride, Elena, a strong girl with a white smile and hairy arms.
The apartment was newly furnished in yellow maple. There were clean curtains and an ugly imitation Oriental rug.
“I should get fifty a month for it,” said Mr. Andreapoulis, “but the times are so bad that, frankly, I’ll be willing to take forty.”
Maury stood looking out of the kitchen window to the small concrete-and-cinder yard, the endless lots without trees, just dry waving grass as far as the distant billboards on the highway. Bleak, even in the glittering sunlight. If the world were flat this would be the place where you dropped off into the void. Still, it was immaculate, the landlord was respectable and friendly and they wouldn’t be here long anyway.
“My wife speaks no English,” said Mr. Andreapoulis. “Were newlyweds, too. Maybe you will help her to learn English, Mrs. Friedman? And she will teach you to cook, she’s a wonderful cook.” He looked suddenly flustered. “Excuse me, how stupid, I only meant that so many American young ladies don’t learn cooking—although probably you’re a fine cook already.”
Agatha laughed. “No, I can’t boil water as the saying goes. I’m ready to be taught. Until I get a job, that is.”
So it was settled. They made two trips on the subway with their suitcases, a heavy box of books, and their one purchase, a superheterodyne radio which Maury bought for thirty-five dollars. They placed it on the table in the living room next to the lamp.
There was a certain amount of guilt over its purchase, but in the end it turned out to have been a good investment. People needed some recreation, and the movies cost seventy cents for the two of them. For nothing at all, the radio brought the Philharmonic on Sunday afternoons, and a good dance band almost any time. They could dance on the kitchen floor to Glen Gray’s Casa Loma Orchestra or to Paul Whiteman at the Biltmore. They could Begin the Beguine, Fly Down to Rio, or turn off the lights and Dance in the Dark, alone together in their private world. Dazed and entranced, they moved like one body across the room to where, still not separating from her, he switched off the sound, and then in the sudden fall of silence they moved again like one body to the bed.
20
They walked up Riverside Drive and turned toward West End Avenue at Iris’ street. It was a warm evening for April and people were out, fathers of families walking their dogs and young people singing “When a Broadway Baby Says Goodnight,” shoving at one another and laughing boisterously. They were on their way to a party. Iris and Fred were coming back from one.
“Sorry to break it up so early,” Fred said when they reached the building where Iris lived. “I shouldn’t have left so much homework for Sunday night. My fault,” he said apologetically.
“That’s all right,” she told him. “I’ve got work too,” which was not the case.
They stood a moment. It was awkward; should she ask him upstairs for a few minutes, after all? She didn’t really want to and she knew he didn’t want to come.
“Thanks for inviting me,” he said. “It was a great party. I didn’t know you and Enid were friends.”
“Were not. It’s just that our mothers work on the same charity committee and it happened through them.” It occurred to her as she said the word ‘charity’ that it really was odd for her mother to be doing charity when there was never an extra dollar at home. But then, Ma always said, we must be very thankful, there are so many people far worse off than we are.
“Well, it was a great party,” Fred said again. He started to move away. “Don’t forget, newspaper meeting after school tomorrow.”
“I won’t forget,” she answered. She went inside and took the elevator upstairs.
Her mother was reading in the living room. She had a look of surprise. “So soon? And where’s Fred?”
“It broke up early. And he had homework.”
“My goodness, it’s only nine-thirty. He could have had something to eat.
I put the cocoa pot out and some cake.”
“We had too much to eat, we were stuffed.”
“So you had a good time, then,” her mother said. “Don’t brother your father, he’s doing the income tax. I guess I’ll go read in bed, it’s more comfortable.”
Iris went to her room and took her dress off. It was emerald green, the color of wet leaves. Her mother bought it when Fred first took an interest in her. That was when they started to work on the school paper together. Her mother said she ought to pay more attention to her clothes now that she was fifteen.
Fred was a serious boy. When he filled out he would be a fine-looking man in spite of his glasses. Right now he was very tall and skinny, but he had a nice face. And he was one of the smartest boys in school.
They had been having such good discussions all winter, working in the editorial room, and sometimes walking home in the late afternoons. He was interested in politics and they had great arguments, although mostly they agreed on things.
“I respect your mind,” he told her. “You reason things out. You think for yourself.”
They felt, although they did not say so, rather superior to most of the other kids. They filled their lives, they didn’t waste time. Fred did a lot of reading too, and they talked about what they read.
She knew he liked her, and this was one of the happiest things that had ever happened to her. It was like having something new to look forward to every day.
A week ago he had invited her to a wedding. One of his cousins was getting married and he had been told to bring a girl. It was to be a big formal wedding, and everyone would wear evening clothes. Iris had never been at any wedding at all, and she was excited about that and about having been asked by Fred.
Her mother said, “Well, we shall have to get you something very nice to wear.” She had an idea. She went to a box on the top shelf of her closet and took out a dress. It was pink silk and Iris recognized the dress in the portrait of her mother, her Paris dress.