"It's Sid," said Ida, weeping. "He's had a heart attack."
"It looks pretty serious, Bruce," stuttered Max, taking the phone. "I think he's very sick."
"He's dead," said Belle.
"Oh, shit," said Gold with stinging tears spurting into his eyes. He does this to me every time. He'll ruin my whole day, my whole weekend.
"Anything wrong?" asked Ralph.
"It's my brother. He's dead."
"I'm sorry," said Ralph. "You'll want to leave immediately, won't you?"
That thought had not entered Gold's head until Ralph put it there, and he could think of no way of expelling it without risking the opinion that he was not worth his salt or as good as gold.
"It's terrible," he said, "terrible."
"I know just how you feel," said Ralph. "I'll get you a limousine."
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In seconds secret servicemen were bearing him outside to a waiting automobile. As Gold pulled away he saw the President's car arriving. Everything, he lamented, happens to me. And he learned once again what he'd known all along and intended to write about soon, that every change was for the worse.
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JL HERE was as much bitterness at Sid's funeral as there had been at his wedding. Mourners connected most closely by blood to one of the two contending families divided themselves into separate camps. Gold was a reluctant link between. Harriet was devastated, at first by a grief that was pure only briefly, and then contaminated by a vengeful rebellion against the general knowledge that Sid's affections for her had dwindled over the years into a bored and complying acceptance. Her senses were in shambles, with the meanest among them foremost. Much of her frightened awareness of loneliness and loss seemed to pour itself into a fanatic concern with possessions and almost all of the energies of grief were converted into safeguarding them with a savage vigilance against the pilferage and impending rapacious onslaughts she imagined. More and more openly she sniped with sharper nastiness at the other Golds for the amounts of money Sid had dissipated among them. None had volition to reply.
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The burdens of responsibility for the numerous roles to be filled fell increasingly upon Gold and, surprisingly, old Milt, who embraced eagerly the opportunity to render competent service. Harriet's two sons were officious and proud, and of hardly any use with the practical arrangements of the funeral and the ceremonial ones of ritual and courtesy. One son-in-law had separated from her daughter and did not come at all. The other appeared bored and drifted up and down the carpeted floor at the mortuary as though interviewing for a boon companion with whom to trade disrespectful wisecracks in a corner of the chapel.
Sheiky from Neptune Avenue paid a condolence call at the chapel the evening before the burial services, red-cheeked and bald in a plain dark suit with baggy pants. He kept his hands in his pockets until the occasion for extending one in greeting had passed. Then he gave Gold an envelope containing three checks for five thousand dollars each.
"We won't need money, Sheiky."
"Keep them and see. Tear them up if you don't. Or give it to Israel. I don't mind seeing my money go to Israel."
"Sheiky, how'd you make your money?" asked Gold in that familiar state of perplexity that arose whenever he remembered Sheiky and his fortune. "From peddling ice cream and costume jewelry to getting rich in computers, real estate, shopping centers, and reinsurance—when did you learn those things?"
Sheiky from Neptune Avenue studied Gold steadily with his old look of impudence a long time before granting a reply. "I never thought of it as computers or real estate," he answered with the same flippant look of childhood that asserted itself also in the rude independence of his younger brother, Fishy. "Angles and loopholes—that's about the only business I've ever been in, like everyone else who makes it big. And I could always move pretty fast. That your father over there? Will he remember me?"
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"Pa, this is Sid's friend, Sheiky from Neptune Avenue. The one with the millions."
Julius Gold was sitting upright in a small upholstered chair as though he could neither rise nor sag. Recognition dawned slowly in bleary eyes so blank as to appear almost sightless, and he was sluggish in finding the thought he wished to express.
"Sid always told me you were smarter. I wouldn't believe him. You smarter?"
Sheiky from Neptune Avenue answered with a sympathetic smile. "Yeah, Mr. Gold. I think I was."
Julius Gold nodded a second. "No, you're not," he retorted listlessly. "He was smarter. What did he know, that dummy?"
Someone in back of Gold was weeping. Harriet had sent word that she did not want Gussie at the funeral or in her home. Harriet sent word now that she wanted just Gold to walk with her to the farthest wall of the room for another look at Sid in his coffin. Harriet had ordered the open coffin. She held Gold's arm with both her hands. Gold averted his gaze from the lifeless face in the coffin with a feeling of nauseated pain. Harriet moaned quietly.
"Why did he have to do this to me? He knew how I hated to be alone. That's why he stopped taking those trips."
Gold felt her nails through the sleeve of his suit and realized he'd never fully understood till then how thoroughly he detested her. Then he broke and screamed:
"Sid, you fuck—why did you have to die? Who will take care of us now?"
But no one heard. His words were smothered in sobs.
They sat shivah in Harriet's house, a location greatly inconvenient for those living in Brooklyn. There were vacant bedrooms but none were offered. By evening prayer of the first day, the day of the funeral, they knew
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they would need the money from Sheiky to pay for an apartment and furniture and living expenses in Florida for the old man and Gussie. All he owned was the spending money from his annuity and Social Security. Sid had been paying for just about everything else. And Sid left everything to Harriet. Even the annuity had come from Sid: the consolidation and sale of the old man's leather business was a fiction contrived to surround the old man with the illusion he was a person of sufficient means to retire prosperously. Now Gold's father was a burden to be shared only by those willing to assume it.
The worried creases in Irv's forehead darkened as Ida instructed Gold to establish beyond doubt that Julius Gold would not be able to continue living so well in the future. Esther and Rose, with Max consenting, offered everything but did not have much. The two sisters had been weeping copiously—at times neither could walk without assistance—and desisted now and then as if only to avoid the appearance of attempting to overshadow Harriet and her mother. Victor stole to Gold's side to volunteer monthly payments if Muriel were never informed. Muriel wanted Joannie to pay for everything.
"She's got the most money now, hasn't she? And she couldn't even tear herself away for the funeral, could she?"
Only Gold knew that Joannie's marriage was ending in a way that might leave her without money and that it would have been practically impossible for her to fly in from California any sooner than the following evening. When the time came to unfold the news of his financial plight to Julius Gold on the second day, he was not much surprised.
"I raised him from a baby," said Julius Gold distantly, as though Gold, Milt, and Belle were strangers. Milt was in the room with Gold to supply financial explanations. Belle was a steadying influence. "My son Sid. And now he's dead. He was like a father to me. You don't know."
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"I know," said Gold.
"He took care of me better than anyone. Always he let me be what I wanted."
"I know," said Gold. "Sid was a wonderful person."
"You don't know," said the old man. "Not like you."
"Pop, why do you pick on me?" His father shook off with revulsion the hand Gold reached out to touch him. "Just because I had to wear eyeglasses and got good marks in school?"
"Sure," said Julius Gold. "That's why."
"Didn't you ever like me?"
"Sure—when you were small I liked
you. But that's all." In the melancholy silence that followed, the old man's swollen eyes were further filled with tears. "I don't like it she tells me Gussie can't come here and can't go there." He looked fully at Gold suddenly with a remarkable kind of curiosity. "You got children?"
Gold sank down until his face was level with his father's and peered at him closely. A chill spread through his veins. "Sure, Pop. Three. Don't you remember? Dina, your favorite grandchild. She's our daughter. Don't you remember?"
Paying no attention to the question, the old man began talking as though Gold had not spoken. "You got children, don't let them send you to Florida. The old shouldn't be with just the old. The old should be with the young, but they don't want us no more. My wife was sick in my house, I never put her out till she went to the hospital and died there. My mother died in my brother Meyer's house, and I stayed with her and talked, even when she couldn't hear. You can ask Sid, but Sid ain't here no more and that's it, fartig. It's warm there and it's for old people."
"Pop." Gold paused in a tremulous hush, chastened beyond measure by the fearful proximity in which he found himself to the very frangible boundaries of amnesia and senile rambling of mind. "You're old."
"When you were young," said his father without physical flourishes and barely any modulations of
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emotion, "I remember I never hit you. I didn't have to. All I had to do was look and yell, and you turned into a scared child. I made you behave. Once I made Sid run away for the whole summer just by looking and yelling. Now I'm the child. You talk to me like I don't understand. Don't talk like I'm a baby. If I get cranky it's because I can't always sleep when I'm tired and my hip hurts. Not because I'm dumb. Now she tells me through my grandchild she don't want me to smoke cigars in her house. It's Sid's house, not hers. He's my son, not hers. I know what I'm saying."
"Not all the time, Pa," said Gold tenderly with the apprehensive feeling he was communing with a mind that might not be altogether whole.
"Then that's the time to baby me," said the old man almost without spirit in a cranky and pathetic whine. "Not now, when I make sense. Tell me something. A riddle. Tell me, how is it that a father can take care of seven children, and seven children, now six, can't take care of one father?"
Gold, with patience wearing thin, did not enumerate for him that the wise Yiddish folk proverb traditionally made reference to a mother rather than a father, that the posturing, melodramatic old fuck had never been able to provide for anything close to seven children at one time, and that his children had been supporting him. "Pop, we are going to take care of you," he said in a voice kept low. "That's why we're talking."
"Don't make me go back to Florida."
"Not until you want to, I promise. Gussie wants to go now."
"I don't care about Gussie."
"You can stay in New York."
"I want to be with my friends," he complained.
"How can you be in both places? You can fly down to Florida to your friends whenever you miss them."
"Where can I stay here?"
"Wherever you want."
"I want to live with my children."
"You can live with your children," Gold assured him
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from the bottom of his heart. "You can even move right in with us if you want."
"No, he can't," Belle told him decisively when they left the room. "He can't live with us."
"I know he can't," said Gold, grumbling. "I'm glad to see you're not perfect."
"What will you do if he says he wants to?"
"I'll tell him he can't," said Gold. "That's the time to let him know he has to do what we want." Gold sat down tiredly. "Unregenerate." Marveling, Gold fetched a long breath of inexpressible weariness and went pale with incredulity. "And without any redeeming social value. Once long ago he bought me a toy. Now I'll have to help carry him."
"I wouldn't mind that," said Bell. "You've always been good with me about my mother."
Then there came the first of Ralph's phone calls. Ralph began with radiant messages of sympathy from Alma, Amy, Honey, Misty, Christy, and the President. With Belle watching, Gold listened a minute more and said he could not consider a government appointment then and might not want to in the future. Ralph responded with a kind of immune, fatherly indulgence that terrified Gold very much.
"You have to, Bruce. You can't say no to the President."
"Why not?"
"Because nobody does. You have to say yes when your President asks."
"Who does?"
"Everybody, Bruce. You can't say no when your President asks."
"Ralph, I feel shitty tonight. My brother's dead and my father's old."
"I understand," Ralph said with solicitude. "I'll call you back after you've had time to recover."
Gold was fidgeting when he faced Belle. "I'm not really comfortable with rich people," he explained. "I never have been."
Belle's nod was noncommittal. "We'll have to do
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something about Harriet. We'll never be able to last here a whole week."
Mursh Weinrock arrived as one of* the visitors, without jokes, his teeth stained with nicotine, with fingertips and complexion to match. Gold realized there'd be distant relatives and old family acquaintances of whose existence he had not thought in decades and a goodly number of whom he would have traveled seven leagues out of his way to escape meeting.
It was problematic which had the stronger title to bereavement, his father or Harriet, but all the tactical advantages in weaponry resided with the latter. Her paranoid distrust and vindictiveness were contagious and bred a palpable atmosphere of one-sided hostility which neither she nor her children, mother, and sister took pains to conceal.
"Help me up," Gold's father at length said to him. "I want to go home. She don't want us here and I don't want to stay." Clinging heavily to Gold's arm, he moved from the house without even a perfunctory farewell to anyone in his dead son's family. "I never wanted to bury a child," he murmured mournfully as they crossed the sidewalk to the car. "Not even you."
After a moment of astonishment, Gold allowed those words to find their place amidst the various other corrosive recollections of recent origin that were seething in his brain with such depressing and infuriating effect: Ralph would not hide him, Conover would taunt him, the ex-Governor of Texas owned him. Who would teach him to defend himself? When Ralph phoned an hour later, he decided that he did not want the government appointment.
His season in the White House was over.
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By the morning of the third day Gold had organized his family to complete sitting shivah for Sid in Esther's house, with Rose and Ida helping with the cooking and refreshments and neighboring families in the apartment building furnishing the male adults needed to comprise the minyan of ten for the prayers at morning and sundown. The men assembled after breakfast before leaving for work and returned in the early evening before darkness had fallen. Gold spoke to the secretary at the college about reconvening his classes for regular meetings the week following. As he was leaving Esther's that third day for a trip back into the city the downstairs bell rang with someone wishing to speak to him. Gold could not for the life of him guess who it was.
"It's Greenspan, Dr. Gold," rasped the voice on the intercom. "Lionel."
"Bulldog, what do you want?" asked Gold impatiently. "We're all through."
"The White House wants you to change your mind."
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"I'm not going to call them."
"They'll call you. What's your sister's phone number? Will you open the door and let me up?"
"No," said Gold. "The number's in the phone book, goddamn it. And please stop bothering me."
"Under what name?" entreated Greenspan.
Gold gave the grilled aperture into which he was speaking a pitying look. "Bulldog, what is the name on the bell you just pressed?"
Greenspan took nearly half a minute to reply. "Moscowitz
."
"That's her name, Lionel. How do you think you reached me just now?" The phone rang even as Gold was turning the doorknob.
"I'm sorry to bother you again," said Ralph. "But I think we're ready to offer you an appointment in the State Department right up near the top."
"Ralph, I don't want it," said Gold.
"Sure you do, Bruce," said Ralph, sounding entirely convinced. "Your President needs you. He often says you're the only person in the country with whom he feels completely comfortable. Is it because you feel you aren't good enough?"
This nettled Gold. "I'm good enough."
"Because you're Jewish?"
"Not because I'm Jewish."
"It's because I said I wouldn't hide you, isn't it?" guessed Ralph with surprising astuteness. "I'll say I'll hide you, if you want me to."
"Goodbye, Ralph," said Gold and was nearly knocked over when he collided with Harris Rosenblatt striding out of the Harvard Club onto West 44th Street in the city. "Harris, what were you doing in there?"
Perhaps Harris Rosenblatt only looked a hand or two taller and a tone or two whiter because he had grown a stone or two leaner. "I belong," he announced with exalted self-confidence, rubbing his perfectly straight sides as though congratulating himself on lacking a paunch. "I'm a member."
"How can you be a member of the Harvard Club,"
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asked Gold in frank naivet£, "when you went to Columbia with me and dropped out of graduate school because you knew you were going to fail?"
Good as Gold Page 42
