“Cooperate? Officer, take a look at him! He doesn’t even understand what’s going on! You’ll have to go, I’m sorry.” Firm. Firm. “You can try again tomorrow. There ought to be improvement by then, I hope.”
“Look, I’ll go easy. Just another minute.”
“No, now. You’ll have to go now.”
Much later, the doctor’s voice, tough Brooklyn snarl. “I don’t like cops.”
“That why you helped me this morning? You knew I understood everything.”
“Yeah. I knew. Lie back, I’m supposed to look under this bandage.”
Light fingers, almost fluttering. “Am I hurting you? I’ll try not to. We don’t want any infection under here. Spoil your handsome mug.”
Small thrill of pain, tingles down to the belly.
“Sorry, had to be done.”
“It’s all right.” Wincing, looked into narrowed eyes, black brows like caterpillars, intern, about my age, no, has to be three years older. “Why’d you help me this morning?”
“I’m always for the underdog … and today you were it. In my experience cops are always against the underdog.”
He’s all mixed up. Sometimes the cops are the underdog. He’s mixed up, but no matter, this isn’t the place for philosophy or sociology. “Tell me the truth, Doctor, am I going to be all right?”
“It’ll take a couple of weeks. Take it easy, let the collarbone heal and get over the shock.”
“Just a couple of weeks, you’re sure? I’ve a family to support, I’ve gotta get working.” All panicky again thinking about it. Feeling the responsibility. Like lifting a ton.
“How many children?”
“One boy. God, I couldn’t afford any more, not now.”
The doctor stood back from the bed, far enough for Maury to see the whole of him. The stethoscope hung from the pocket of his long white coat. Interns were proud, liked to display that first stethoscope. You could see the pride in him. Also fatigue. Also intelligence, very, very much intelligence.
“And your wife? How is she?”
“She’s all right. The nurse said she was coming back today.”
“A very lovely girl. And frail.”
“Is there something wrong? What did you see?”
“Don’t be alarmed, I shouldn’t have said that. I only meant I could see she’s delicate, can’t stand up under too much. So I know what you mean by responsibility. Am I right?”
Maury sighed. “You’re very perceptive, Doctor.”
“That’s what they tell me.”
His head throbbed with every step. He had been home for three days and the doctor had said he ought to walk a little. He went to the end of the block. There was a grassy space between the houses and he sat down on a stone. His forehead had begun to itch under the bandage, and that meant it was healing. A big gash, they had said, but it will heal fast because you’re young. Thank goodness, he’d saved his eyes from those vicious animals. Animals? Animals didn’t do things like that to each other. It was a warm day, but he still felt cold. He had even worn a thin sweater. Nervous shock. It would take time to get over it. He was surprised Agatha was doing as well as she was. She had been so scared about him that she hadn’t even asked what he was going to do.
When Bruchman had come to the house she had gone into the bedroom with Eric, but she had overheard their conversation. Bruchman had begun by explaining that somebody—he didn’t say who—had made an awful mistake, hadn’t clarified the new districts, and so Maury had mistakenly been sent into an area that wasn’t theirs. But that had been corrected now. Also, the detective who had questioned Maury in the hospital had been taken care of and nobody would be asking him any more questions. By the way, Maury had handled that very nicely. As a matter of fact, as soon as he got on his feet, they would be wanting him in the office, and no more running around the way he had been doing.
“No, thanks,” Maury had said.
If it was a matter of money, surely he knew that money was never a problem. He could earn double what he’d been getting. Hadn’t they paid for his private room in the hospital and come right out here to make sure his wife had money while he was gone? No, it wasn’t a matter of money, and indeed Maury appreciated everything, but quite simply he wanted to be through. No hard feelings, he just wanted to be through. He lied to make it easier. He might even be moving away from New York.
Bruchman had tried some more, had even been quite insistent, but then finally, seeing that it was no use, had gone out after shaking hands and wishing Maury good luck.
Agatha had opened the bedroom door and come out crying. The tears were running down her face, but her face was shining and she had clung to him. “Oh, if anything had happened to you, I don’t know what I would have done, how I would have borne it!”
“I’ll take care of you,” Maury had said, “I swear I will.” And she had replied, “I know you will, Maury, I know.”
But how he would, he had no idea. How? Where? He got up and walked slowly back to the house, remembering the want ads and the patient lines at five in the morning, a hundred men for every job, the lines and lines from the Bronx to Brooklyn and Queens and back again.
How? Where?
He turned the corner, his head still throbbing, and climbed the stairs. Agatha heard him and opened the door. Then behind her in the living room he saw his mother, and sitting on the sofa, holding the little boy, his father.
“Ma?” he said wonderingly.
“Who else?” Her voice was bright and trembling. “And you don’t have to talk. We know it all. Thank God, thank God, you’re alive.”
22
He stood in the dusty office waiting for the girl to make out his paycheck. The room had a linoleum floor and there was a zigzag tear in one of the window shades. He thought of the big office on Broadway: three floors, rows of desks, mahogany, rugs, like a bank.
Pa hung up the telephone. “I read your mind, Maury. It used to be different.”
“At least, you’re in business.”
“True, true. We’re keeping our heads above water.” His father lit a cigar, not a Havana of old, but black and pungent nevertheless.
“The cheap ones smell better to me than the ones you used to get from Dunhill’s.”
“That’s because you don’t know anything about cigars. I’ve still got the humidor and the day will come, mark my words, when I fill it with Dunhill’s again.”
“I hope so, Pa.”
“I know so. I have confidence in this country. Well pull out of this. In the meantime, I’m sorry I can’t do more. Fifty dollars a week isn’t much to pay. But it’s the best I can do.”
“I’m lucky to have a job at all.”
“Ah, but it’s a disgrace that you, with all your education, should be walking around tenement houses collecting rents. I could get sick thinking about it.”
“Don’t think about it, then. As you say, were keeping our heads above water. That’s more than a lot of people are doing. Well, I’ll start home. Don’t forget, we expect you at seven.”
“You could wait and ride in our car. Why take the subway?”
“Thanks, but I want to get back to see Eric and give Aggie a hand.”
“I hope she’s not going to too much trouble over dinner. We’re not company, after all.”
“Aggie likes to cook. Don’t worry about that.”
“Your mother’s bringing her Strudel, enough for an army. You know your mother.”
“Aggie’ll be pleased. Well, I’ll see you.”
“Maury, wait. Are things all right at home? You’re happy?”
He could actually feel his face closing up, the muscles growing stiff. “Why, yes, of course. Why not?”
Now his father’s face closed. “Good, good. I only asked.”
The subway lurched and roared. Games. Playing games with each other. Pa knew he knew they were aware. Iris was loyal, but surely it had been discussed anyway. Well, he was not going to talk about it. Not now, not yet. Maybe sometim
e it might spill out of him. He couldn’t swear that it wouldn’t, but he wasn’t ready yet to expose the secret places.
Maybe after they moved, his mind said, and the other half said: That won’t make any difference and you know it won’t. They still had almost a year to go on their lease. His father had mentioned an apartment in one of the buildings he managed; you could get three good-sized rooms, really four counting the kitchen, for forty-five dollars a month. It was on the Heights, though, which these days was jokingly—some joke—called the Fourth Reich because it had filled up with refugees from Germany. You hardly heard English on the streets.
He couldn’t imagine Agatha up there. It occurred to him now that whenever he was somber or serious he thought of her as Agatha, but when everything was going along happily he thought of her as Aggie. Well, he couldn’t imagine Agatha sitting in the park and wheeling the stroller up there on Washington Heights. She would be a total outsider as she was where they lived now. Come to think of it, she would be an outsider almost anyplace in New York City except on Park or Fifth or the streets in between. He thought wryly, We are hardly ready for that.
The subway swung around a curve, his body sagging with it. He was tired. His work didn’t warrant such tiredness. This was a tiredness of the spirit, of frustration. She wouldn’t admit that she drank. He could come in and see it in her eyes, smell it on her breath, and she would only insist stubbornly that he was imagining things. She would go over to the attack, leaving him on the defensive. He begrudged her an afternoon nap, she said; he was suspicious, a monomaniac. For a while he had measured the bottles and sought out the places where she hid the cheap wine she bought a bottle at a time, a small one so that it could be quickly consumed and spirited away in the garbage. He had done all that, but had got nowhere and finally stopped because it was a futile proceeding, without point.
He reasoned with her … “You said your nerves were bad because of the work I was doing and I could understand that. But now I’m working respectably for my father, and you’ve nothing to be afraid of. Why are your nerves bad now?” To which she countered with entire reasonableness, “If a person could tell you why his nerves were bad they wouldn’t be bad, would they?” So there they were, round and round. Nowhere.
But he knew what it was. He was sure he knew. She was sorry she had married him. She might not know it herself, but she was. She loved me when she married me, oh, God, she loved me! And she loves me still, but it’s wrong for her, all the same. Of course she won’t leave me, and I won’t leave her. I couldn’t leave her. Not I, son of my parents and all their parents before them. A man doesn’t leave his wife and child. But I couldn’t do it, anyway. I wouldn’t want to live without you, Aggie. Only, why aren’t you the way you were? Why?
Round and round.
The subway doors were jammed. All the gray-faced city people in their dark clothes were carrying packages in red and green wrappings. He had forgotten it was Christmas on the day after tomorrow. Now Santa Claus came in and hung on the strap, across from two little boys with scared, awed faces.
“What’s he doing on the subway?” one whispered, and Santa turned, clearing his throat.
“Just giving the reindeer a bit of a rest,” he said, and people smiled approvingly and winked and patted the boys’ caps.
Most people don’t want much, Maury thought. When you come down to it they just want a place where they don’t have to be afraid of what’s coming, and they want somebody to love them.
So much for philosophy, he thought, and was glad to get out into the damp night air, and walked the few blocks to his house looking forward to Eric, who was always so totally, so unreservedly overjoyed to see him, thinking of Eric’s row of teeth and his thickening hair, his feet in red galoshes, his pealing laugh.
The first thing that he saw when he opened the door was the tree. It was a bushy one, sharply fragrant and as tall as Aggie. She had a carton of glass ornaments and tinsel and had begun to decorate the tree. She hadn’t told him a word about it.
“You haven’t forgotten that my parents are coming?”
“Of course I haven’t! Can’t you smell the turkey? It’s almost done.”
“But the tree,” he said.
“The tree.”
“What about it?”
“Perhaps it’s my fault,” he said. “I didn’t know you were going to get one. I ought to have told you … we don’t have Christmas trees.”
“We don’t? Who’s we?”
“Why, my father and mother, I mean. They don’t have a Christmas tree.”
“Well, of course I know that! But what has that got to do with us?”
This was not a question of too much wine. She hadn’t had any, he saw at once. This was another question.
“I should think,” he said carefully, “that it had something to do with us.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Well, it’s not that I personally have any objection. You can have all the trees you want as far as I’m concerned. But it would be an awful shock to my father, Aggie, and after all the grief we’ve had in this family I just don’t want any more.”
“Your father can do what he wants in his own house. But I don’t see why Eric should be deprived, do you?”
“Eric hasn’t the least idea what this is about,” Maury said patiently.
“All right, but what about me? A tree is one of my loveliest memories of home.”
“I shouldn’t think you’d have too many lovely memories of home.” He regretted the words as soon as he had said them. Hitting below the belt, that was.
“If you’re referring to my parents’ prejudice, I can only answer that yours get A in that department, too.”
“Okay. I don’t want to argue about it. But please, Agatha, I beg you, take the tree down. Don’t slap my father in the face with that the minute he opens the door. We’ve come this far, must we spoil it? Please.”
She answered him gently and stubbornly, “Maury, I truly don’t want to make things harder, but this is our home and if your father really wants to accept me—us—isn’t it better not to sham?”
“Aggie, the man is going on fifty and he’s had a tough struggle. Do we need to upset him?”
“That sounds like a Jewish mother, having a heart attack every time one of her children displeases her.”
“I don’t care for that kind of remark, Agatha,” he said stiffy.
“Oh, come on, don’t get all huffy about it, as if I were an anti-Semite! Jokes about Jewish mothers are part of the language, for heaven’s sake! Besides, they are possessive! And you always say Gentiles drink too much, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t say Gentiles do. I say you do.”
She ignored him and, reaching up, tied a red satin ball on a branch.
“What the hell am I going to say to him when he comes in? You don’t know what this means to Pa. Listen, Agatha, in the towns where his parents grew up, where my mother grew up, Christmas was the time that the Cossacks and all the local rowdies used to come riding in with dogs and whips to rape and burn and—”
“There are no Cossacks here and it’s time you people stopped living in the past. This is America. Besides, you yourself said your father lives in the past. Behind medieval walls, I think you said.”
Maury flushed. “Probaby I did. But then your parents are so modern, so broad, so kindly! And at least my father is here!”
“What did it take to bring him here? You had to be almost killed before anything could penetrate that heart of his!”
“At least he’s here,” Maury repeated.
“Maybe mine would be here too if I had let him know the truth! Perhaps I should have told him my husband is running numbers and some thugs have beaten him up, so please come, I need you!” The chiming clock on the radio struck half past six.
“Agatha, they’ll be here any minute. Take it down now, and I promise I’ll help you put it up again tonight after they’ve left. I swear I will,” he said, unfastening a silver b
all.
“Don’t touch that! Listen, is this our house or isn’t it? You resent any suggestion that you should hide your heritage; why should I hide mine? How would you like it if we went to visit my parents and I asked you to—”
“That’s an academic question. You know damn well they don’t want to see me in their house. And do you know something? I don’t want to see those bastards either.”
“Do you have to be so vulgar?”
“Sure, I’m a kike. Kikes are vulgar, don’t you know that?”
From the room across the hall came Eric’s sudden wail.
“See what you’ve done? He’ll remember this, Maury. Children remember these things.” She began to cry. “It was going to be so lovely and you’ve ruined it! I hate your voice when you yell like that! You look mean! You ought to see yourself.”
“All right, all right. Stop crying, will you? Keep the blasted tree and I’ll explain it—”
“I don’t want the tree. Take it away.” A glass ball fell to the floor and broke into chips of glitter. “All the joy’s gone out of it. I’m going in to Eric.”
She rested her head on his shoulder. “Was it awful, Maury? Was the evening all spoiled?”
“No, no, they had a good time. They were just glad to be here.”
“Because I wouldn’t want your parents to hate me.”
“They don’t hate you, Aggie. They like you, honestly.” He stroked her trembling back, feeling the great sadness in her. How gay she had been—
“Such a hard world,” she said. “How is one to bear such a hard world, tell me?”
“It’s not hard all the time. And it’s the only world we have.”
“Do you think I’ve been drinking, Maury?”
“I know you haven’t.”
“That give me a brandy now. I’m awfully cold.”
“Hot tea will warm you. I’ll make some.”
“It’s not the same. It won’t relax me. Please, I need it tonight.”
“No. Let go, I’ll make tea for both of us.”
“Then never mind. Just stay here.”
“Aggie, darling, everything’s all right. You are. We are.”