His thoughts embarrassed him. They hurt him, too. As if his daughter were an item on sale! Yet, a girl needed to be married; who would take care of her through life, and when her father was gone?
There was something about Iris, his lovely, lovely girl. He’d tried to talk about her to Anna, but for some reason, Anna was never able to talk about Iris without such visible pain that he would drop the subject. She could talk more easily about Maury! He wished sometimes that he himself could speak openly to Iris but he couldn’t do that, either. He couldn’t ask: “What are you like when you’re out with fellows? Do you smile, do you laugh a little?” Hah! Out with fellows! There was less and less of that every year. She was getting older: twenty-six. And the men were mostly away. He tried. That young widower he’d brought to dinner last winter. His wife had died of pneumonia. Might he not be looking for a fine, steady wife to mother his baby? But nothing had come of it.
So, maybe the house would make a difference.
He’d gone back three times to look at it that week, wavering toward the thought that he had really wanted something newer and more impressive, and back again to the fact that Anna loved it. In the end he had signed the contract of sale. It was like putting his name to a written blessing. Words like “dear home” and “peace” floated through his unashamedly sentimental head while he wrote his name.
He turned into his building and, waiting for the elevator, sought his name on the directory: Friedman-Malone, Real Estate and Construction. He put his shoulders back. Look forward.
“There’ve been a couple of calls,” Miss Donnelly said. “I’ve put the messages on your desk. None of them urgent except one. A Mr. Lovejoy wants to see you this afternoon.”
“I’m seeing the accountant at four. What Lovejoy? The man who owns the house? What does he want?”
“I’ve no idea. I told him you had a four o’clock appointment, but he said he’d come over at half past. He’d wait for you to see him at your convenience.”
A gray-haired, quiet-voiced, Brooks Brothers type. “I don’t want to waste your time or my own, Mr. Friedman. We’re both busy men. So I’ll get to the point. I’ve come to ask you to withdraw your offer for the house.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The agent made an unpardonable error. He was supposed to have given preference to another couple, very dear old friends of ours, as a matter of fact … He actually sold it right out from under them.”
“I still don’t understand. I gave my check and your agent signed the contract of sale.”
“I’ve been in Caracas, just docked this noon and went home, but as soon as I learned what had happened I came right back to the city. I’d given the agent a power of attorney to sell the house, with the understanding that if my friends should decide they wanted it, it was to go to them, you see.”
“Apparently they didn’t want it, or he wouldn’t have sold it to me, would he?”
“He was an inexperienced young fellow, substituting for his uncle who was in the hospital. I’m afraid he’s been severely reprimanded for the mistake. I’m truly sorry.”
Maybe this was an omen, a sign that the house was wrong for them. They could go out looking again, now that the weather was fine, and come up with something much more to his liking.
“I’m prepared to return your check with two thousand dollars’ profit to you,” Mr. Lovejoy said.
Joseph picked up his pen and tapped it on the blotter. Why should the man be so eager? There was something odd here. It was like feeling a presence in a dark room: you can’t see it or hear it but you know something is there.
He fenced. “My wife likes the house.”
“Ah, yes. These other people—the wife went to boarding school with my wife and it would mean a very great deal to them both if they could be neighbors.”
Mr. Lovejoy leaned forward a little. There was a certain pressure in his voice and his eyes were anxious. His forehead was gathered into a small lump over each eye. For a moment Joseph had some fleeting thought of a criminal conspiracy: Mafia, perhaps, who needed the house? But that was absurd. This man was of a definite class, in banking, brokerage or shipping. Something like that. His dress, his face, his accent, all belonged in that category.
“You know how women are … old family friendship, going back for three or four generations … it would mean a very great deal to us, I assure you, if you’d withdraw. And I’m certain this very same agent could find you another house which you’d like as well or better. After all,” he smiled deprecatingly, “the house is awfully old and quite run-down too, as you no doubt saw.”
“Oh, I saw,” Joseph said. “It’s run-down, all right. But as I told you, my wife loves it.” The man was pushing him, ever so delicately, but pushing all the same, and he didn’t like it.
Mr. Lovejoy sighed. “Perhaps there are a few things you haven’t considered. I mean, you don’t really know the area very well … you’re strangers to the town, aren’t you?”
“We’re strangers.”
“Ah, yes. Well, then, you see, we’re a very old community, very close knit. We even have an association on our side of town: the Stone Spring Association, you may have heard of it? It’s a kind of improvement group and social club of people with mutual concerns: our gardens and tennis courts, maintenance of the roadside shade trees, protection of our general interests in the town. Things of that sort.”
“Go on,” Joseph said.
“You know how it is, when people have lived together most of their lives, their attachments are formed. It’s very difficult for a newcorner to move in. Difficult for them and for the newcorner.… Just human nature, after all, isn’t it?”
A flash bulb flared and went out in Joseph’s head, illuminating everything.
“I see,” he said. “I see what you’ve been trying to tell me. No Jews!”
A flush spread up from Mr. Lovejoy’s collar; it was the pink of rare roast beef. “I wouldn’t put it that way exactly, Mr. Friedman. We’re not bigoted people. We don’t hate anyone. But people are always more comfortable with their own kind.”
It was a statement, but it had been presented like a question, as if the man expected Joseph to answer. He didn’t answer.
“A good many people of your faith are buying over toward the Sound. They’re even building a handsome new synagogue, I’m told. Actually, it’s better over there, much breezier in the summer …”
“Usurping the better part of town, are they?”
Mr. Lovejoy ignored that. “The agent should have told you all this, as a service to you. He really did a very poor job.”
“I wouldn’t say so. I didn’t ask him to do anything but show me the house, which he did, and take my money, which he did. As simple as that.”
Mr. Lovejoy shook his head. “Not simple. There’s a great deal more to buying a home than four walls. There’s a whole neighborhood to be taken into consideration. All kinds of social events. People give parties—I should think you wouldn’t want to live someplace and be left out.”
The man is absolutely right. But to retreat now? It’s unthinkable. For myself I don’t give a damn. Whether he wants me there or he doesn’t, it’s all the same to me. I could do a lot better than that old heap of a house. In fact, some people will think I’m out of my mind to buy it, and me in the building business.… That stuff about people wanting to stay with their own kind: fine, I’m the first to say so myself. Except that it should be by choice, not by being told you must.
He said, “We don’t expect you to invite us to your parties and we don’t expect to invite you. We only want to live in the house. And that’s what we intend to do.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“All.”
“I could take this to court, you know. It would be a long, complicated legal tangle and would cost us both a good deal of money and time.”
He was thinking: She’s never had anything except for those first few hectic years before the crash. A trip to Europe. A
diamond ring which I had to pawn and only got back now. (I knew she didn’t even want the ring, but I want her to have it; it’s for me.) And a fur coat which she wore for fifteen years. He could see her creamy face above the rusty old fur which she had kept on wearing because they couldn’t afford a new cloth coat. If she knew about this business today she wouldn’t want the house. She’d make me back down. So she’ll never know. I’ll never let her know.
“Mr. Friedman, I don’t want to wrangle this out in court. I’m too busy, and I’m sure you are too.”
Yes, and it’s too ugly to be brought out in the open, Joseph thought, still not speaking. He was very, very tired and angry with himself for being hurt. What, after all, was new or surprising about this conversation? He ought to have known better.
Mr. Lovejoy, too, was struggling with anger. His voice rose ever so slightly. “If you’re not satisfied with two thousand we can talk it over.”
Joseph looked up from his vision of faces: first Anna’s, then Iris’, even Maury’s and lastly, strangely, Eric’s: a face he could only imagine, which had been taken from him by just such a man, very likely, as this one: this thin man, gaunt almost, wearing the ascetic expression of some figure in an engraved historical tableau, wearing that and a blue silk foulard tie.
“I’m not to be bought off,” he said softly. “I want the house.”
Mr. Lovejoy rose and loomed above the desk. Joseph looked up at him. He was the tallest man he had ever seen.
“Is that your final word, then, Mr. Friedman?”
“It is.”
Mr. Lovejoy walked to the door and turned back. “You ought to know,” he said, “that in all my dealings with your people, all my life, I have found them baffling, difficult and stubborn. You’re no exception.”
“And for two thousand years in our dealings with your people we have found you the same, and worse.” I shall go home and tell Anna that the tension between us could have been cut with a knife. No, of course not; I shan’t tell Anna anything at all.
Mr. Lovejoy’s hand was on the doorknob. Such cold eyes he had, gray as the North Atlantic in the winter: deep, deep, cold and gray. He bowed slightly, then turned and went out, shutting the door without sound behind him, as a gentleman should.
Joseph was still at his desk when Miss Donnelly came in with her hat on.
“Is it all right for me to go home, Mr. Friedman? It’s after five.”
“Yes, yes, go ahead.”
“Is there anything the matter? I thought perhaps—”
He waved his hand. “Nothing. Nothing at all. I was just thinking.”
Anna’s eyes. When she didn’t know he was watching her, he could catch a look in them, as if she were seeing things other people didn’t see. Mourning eyes, and wondering; eyes that could lighten so quickly into laughter. Quality, his father used to say. You can always tell quality. And this man says he doesn’t want her living on his street. His fury mounted.
I’m going to have that house if it’s the last thing I do.
Painters and masons were still working when, in early September, they moved in so that Iris could start the school year. She had been fortunate to get a position as a fourth-grade teacher in what they later learned was the best school in the area. It was not what she had wanted. She wanted, she said, to teach poorer children whose need was greater. If she could have had her way she would have liked to teach on the lower East Side, or even Harlem.
Joseph groaned. “It’s taken most of my life to get away to a place where there was no chance of being pulled back down there. I could take all the bathrooms out of this house so you’d get the feel of Ludlow Street, if you want.”
He was the first to admit that his humor wasn’t humorous, although Anna laughed. But Iris looked exasperated, and Anna’s laugh turned to a sigh.
Oh, Iris was so earnest! She had no real joy in anything, just seemed to stand apart, watching and making her skeptical, acerbic comments. She thought the neighborhood too polished, too self-consciously expensive, and the children she taught reflected the houses they lived in. She disapproved of the things Anna was having done to the house.
“I liked it the way it was,” she said, as the kitchen took new form with stainless steel, white porcelain and dark red tile.
“You can’t mean that!”
“Naturally I don’t mean the dirt. But what you’re making is like something in a magazine.”
“That’s what I’m taking it from. A magazine,” Anna said firmly.
It was the the first time in her life that she could really have what she wanted. The costly pseudo-French furniture which they had been living with all these years had been Joseph’s choice. The odd thing was that when at last she had gotten rid of it and the second-hand men had carried it out of sight with its gilded curlicues, painted flowers and bulbous legs (as if it had rheumatoid arthritis, Anna had used to think) she had felt a pang. They had gone through so much living with these tables and chairs! And when they took the sideboard which Maury had once gouged with his toy hammer she had turned away. (Only the little white bed from Iris’ childhood room had gone with them and was wrapped now in the attic of this house, although Iris didn’t know it. She would have understood what Anna was still hoping for.)
Joseph had told her to buy what she wanted, and she was doing so, spending far less than he would have spent. She’d furnished the dining room at an estate auction in the neighborhood, with a long, plain pine table and an enormous Welsh dresser.… These high rooms needed massive pieces and massive pieces were old; they didn’t make them anymore for the cramped spaces of this century. There were flowers all over this house: clustered on the carpet in the library, scattered in blue and white bouquets on the walls of an airy bedroom. Geraniums in wooden tubs stood at the front door.
It was beginning to take on the look she had striven for, the look of a family which had lived long in one place and slowly collected its possesions through the years. (Hadn’t she lived once in a house like that? This silver has been in my family since before the Revolution, Paul’s mother said.) A false impression? Of course! But so much of life is bound to be false.… And middle-class? Oh-so-genteel, so understated, so English-countryside! Such a house for Joseph and Anna, once of Ludlow Street! And why not? If they liked it, and were comfortable with it? And she had done it well. If it didn’t look like this when the original owners lived in it, then it ought to have.
The one concession to Joseph, who was far too busy these days to care about anything else, was the hanging of her portrait over the mantel in the living room. No, two concessions: the other was the gilded clock, which was to go under the portrait.
“I just don’t like meeting myself every time I walk into that room,” Anna objected, to no avail. About the clock she said nothing.
She unpacked the silver candlesticks, clutching them in her fists for a moment, feeling them before putting them on the dining-room table. The places they had seen before this one! The shelf on Washington Heights, because there had been no dining room table there, wrapped in a blanket for the ocean crossing. She could remember her mother saying the blessing over them, but where were they kept during the week? She thought and thought, straining herself to remember, and could not. And before that they had stood in the houses of a grandmother and an unknown great-grandmother. Her own mother had died before Anna had thought to ask about those other women, or had even cared about knowing. So now she would never know.
When everything else was in place, Anna unpacked her books. She took long afternoons arranging them on the shelves in sections according to the subject: art, biography, poetry, fiction. Under those headings, she arranged them again in alphabetical order according to author.
Here Iris gave approval. “You really have the makings of a library. I’d no idea we had so many.”
“Half of them have been stacked away in barrels and boxes all these years.”
Iris looked at her, Anna thought, with curiosity. “You’re really happy, aren’t
you, Ma?”
“Yes, very.” (It’s a thing you learn and cultivate, this “happiness.” You count what you have and are grateful for it. And if that sounds pompous, I can’t help it.) And, not wanting to ask, yet not able to refrain from asking, “I hope you are too, a little, Iris?” The question came out almost like a plea.
“I’m all right. I’m better off than nine-tenths of the rest of the world.”
Quite true. But it was not the answer Anna had wanted.
If only she would make more friends! There had been two or three young women who taught at her school in New York whom she saw regularly. They used to go to theatre and lunch together on weekends. But now even these few were lost to her unless she wanted to go into the city every week. Mostly now she stayed at home playing the piano, reading or correcting papers. No life for a person of twenty-seven.
She didn’t stop and talk to people. She’d nod and go walking on; Anna had seen her do it often enough. But you needed to make an effort; people didn’t just drop down the chimney and seek you out! On the Broadway block where Anna had done her shopping for all those years she had known everybody; generations of roller-skating kids, the shoe repair man, the butcher. Hadn’t the butcher had a nephew just out of Columbia Law School, and asked for Iris’ telephone number to give to him? But when Anna had mentioned it Iris had been furious.
She had tried, since moving here, to get her out to some of her own activities. There was a very active group of women at the temple sisterhood, some of them even younger than Iris. But, naturally, they were all married. There were the League of Women Voters and the Hospital Guild, which was right now raising funds for a new wing. Anna liked that sort of thing, had done it often enough in the city. People said she had a talent for making these fund raisers a success, for getting the people to come and finding speakers who could hold their attention. It wasn’t hard; you just put a smile on your face, let people know you were available to work and you could be busy every day. It was almost a challenge to move into a new community and see how quickly you could make a place for yourself!