The Boy Who Granted Dreams

by Luca Di Fulvio

  Santo caught one of the coins in midair. The other fell into a muddy puddle. Santo reached through the mud and cleaned the coin on his trousers. “Do we gotta split it three ways, now?” he asked.

  “Naw,” said Christmas. “It’s all yours.”

  “I get two whole bucks?” said Santo happily.

  “How come?” asked Joey.

  Christmas glared at him. “It’s his money,” he said.

  Joey looked at him. “Okay.”

  The week after the little job that had cost Chick his knee, Joey had found a place over Wally’s Bar and Grill, a dive run by some of Big Head’s Italian friends. A month after that, Buggsy and the mole had been transformed from rats into dead rats. But Joey stayed on the Lower East Side. He had become the third member of Diamond Dogs. It took him only a few days to understand that the gang didn’t really exist. But he had a scheme that made use of Christmas’ popularity in the neighborhood. After a month they were collecting a few payoffs and had organized a couple of minor con games. Joey knew he couldn’t count on Santo. But he could see that Christmas didn’t want to get rid of him. Joey thought the head of Diamond Dogs had the stuff. He was smart. He didn’t know much, but he learned fast.

  Summer had dropped on the city all at once over the last few days, killing off the spring with the same violence that winter, two months earlier, had fought it back. The asphalt on the streets seemed to be melting.

  “It’s too fucking hot,” said Christmas. “Let’s go open a hydrant.”

  “Free shower!” laughed Joey.

  Santo blanched. Christmas glanced at him. As always, Santo’s face was fearful. Christmas put an arm around his shoulder. “Just me and Joey. We’ll do it.”

  “Why?” asked Santo.

  “I need you to go to the sweet shop, the bakery on Henry Street.”

  “What you want me do?”

  Christmas rummaged in his pockets and pulled out some change. “You don’t do a thing. Buy a coffeecake and take it back to ya mother …”

  “Yes, but I–”

  “Just do it, Santo. If you don’t understand right away, you will later. You know the rule,” said Christmas.

  Joey guffawed and slapped his thigh. Santo looked down, mortified.

  “Santo,” said Christmas, again putting an arm around the boy’s shoulder, “I just need you to go there so they can see you. That’s all. Buy a coffeecake. And pay it with a ten dollar bill,” he handed a banknote to Santo. “They know you. They know you’re part of Diamond Dogs. Let ’em see that business is good and you ain’t short of cash. Then go on home with a cake for your mother.”

  “O.K. boss,” said Santo, smiling again. “I’ll bring back the change.”

  “Thanks Santo. I owe you a favor.”

  “We’re the Diamond Dogs, right?” said Santo as he walked away.

  Christmas waited until Santo had turned the corner, then he stabbed his finger into Joey’s chest. “If you laugh in his face one more time, I’m gonna break your ass,” he said.

  Joey took a step back, arms raised.

  Christmas stared at him. “I’ve decided to cut him loose,” he said at last.

  Ruth opened her diary. She stroked the nine flowers she had dried and pressed carefully. Nine flowers that Christmas had given her almost a year ago. Nine, like the fingers of her hands.

  Around her in the courtyard of the private school she attended, her classmates and others were laughing and chatting. Ruth kept her distance. Beyond the gates she could see one of those horrible men her grandfather had hired to protect her. Every time she left the house one of these creatures stayed right behind her. They came into stores with her, they left her on the steps of her school and they waited for her outside. When one of the upperclassmen had come over to her to say something witty, the mug of the day had grabbed his arm and asked, “Is everything all right, Miss Isaacson?” Ever since that day, everybody at school called her “Everything-all-right-Miss Isaacson.” Ruth was even more isolated. She grew sulky. She declined to go to the few parties to which she was still invited.

  But she had another reason for keeping away from her schoolmates: She was fourteen years old and something was happening in her body. Something she couldn’t control. Her breasts had begun to grow, swelling under her blouses. First the nipples had hurt, as if they were bruised, as if someone had pinched them; and then — once the pain had passed — they had changed. Not in the way they looked, but how they felt, how sensitive they’d become. If she barely touched them now, she felt a sensation that was pleasant and unpleasant at the same time. A kind of languor. The worst shock, however, came on the day when she had felt a cold cramp in her stomach, like claws digging into her flesh, and then a warm red flow down her inner thighs. She had stayed immobile in her bath that morning. Her eyes full of tears and her hand on her open mouth. Blood. The same blood that had stained her thighs when Bill raped her. The same pain inside. And since then, every month, her woman’s nature reappeared to remind her of Bill. To remind her that she was soiled.

  Leafing through her mother’s fashion magazines, Ruth discovered the new style. Flappers. They had bobbed hair and some of them bound their breasts to look more boyish. In that very moment she decided she would be a flapper. That she would bind her breasts so tightly that she’d look like a planed board. So tightly that she’d look like a boy. Her mother, however, wouldn’t let her cut her long black curls. But at least Ruth — and no one could forbid her to do this, because she didn’t ask anyone’s permission — started wrapping her breasts. To hide them.

  Ruth looked towards a group of boys sitting on the lawn, laughing. She followed the direction of their gaze. They were looking towards a tree, and they kept on laughing. At first she didn’t understand why. Then she saw them. Cynthia Siegel and Benny Dershowitz. They were kissing each other. On the mouth. So many boys and girls were kissing at that age. Ruth saw them all the time. Even her best friend, Judith Sifakis, had kissed a boy once. She’d never said who it was, but she’d kissed him. And she told her all the details. Ruth looked away from Cynthia Siegel and Benny Dershowitz. Everybody wanted kisses. Ruth knew that.

  And she knew it because she herself had wanted to kiss Christmas. And she hated him for that. Because she was different from everyone else; because she had nine fingers and not ten. But she thought of Christmas all the time. He was the only person who had made her feel free. And just because of that she had recently tried to avoid him and not trust him. Christmas was a danger. Ruth didn’t want to be dirtied again. Love was dirty. She — who had done everything there was to do without ever having had her first kiss — knew it. She felt it on her lips and down there, between her legs. When she was with Christmas it was as if a thousand ants were scurrying around underneath her skin. And she hated him for that. She hated herself, too.

  But now recently there was also something else about Christmas that troubled her. His wonderful eyes, so sun-filled and pure, had somehow darkened. From time to time they reminded her of Bill’s darkness. She didn’t quite recognize him. And that inability to recognize him, that seeing him as mysterious, much more of a man than her rich schoolmates, not only troubled her but also made her yearn even more to kiss him, to sink into his arms. The more her desire grew, the harder she was with Christmas, so that he wouldn’t guess. Otherwise he too would see how dirty she was, just as others surely did.

  “Hey, are you asleep?” said a voice. “The bell rang.”

  Ruth slammed her diary shut. One of the nine dried flowers fell to the ground.

  The boy came over to her. Larry Schenk, one of the best-looking boys in school. He was sixteen. He picked up the flower and handed it to Ruth. “So even Everything-O.K.-Miss-Isaacson has a heart,” he smiled. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

  Ruth crumbled the flower. “Nobody,” she said, and went back to class.

  “Hiya Greenie,” said Christmas, coming into Saul Isaacson’s factory building. The gangster was still wearing his green silk suit. “Is Ruth
safe?”

  Greenie looked sideways at him, not answering.

  “Did you find the rat yet?” Christmas asked.

  Greenie inserted a fingernail between his teeth and shook his head.

  Christmas curled his lip and kept walking towards the office of the old man who had sent for him.

  “There are two ways to become head of a business,” Saul Isaacson was saying. “One way starts in the dark, in the stock room, at the heart of the action, where we keep the merchandise, where we learn what’s needed, where you can show your own intuition about the market. The other one begins behind the counter, in contact with clients. That’s where you learn to understand people, what they want and what you want to make them want. These two directors are very different from each other. But after a little while, they have to get more alike. The one who starts in the stock room has to learn to know people, otherwise he’ll always have to depend on his salespeople. The one who started out selling has got to learn to manage the stock room, otherwise he’ll always need to ask what’s going on in there. Do you know what kind of a director you could be?”

  “Why would I even need to know?”

  “Because if you know what you could be in life, you’ll make the right choice.”

  “I’m good at talking to people.”

  “I noticed that. A born schmoozer. But right now, you should listen. This is why I sent for you: I’ll make you an offer. I’m opening a retail store and I need salespeople and stock clerks. Usually I choose people with a little bit of experience, but this time I might make an exception. Do you want a job as a salesman? Play your cards right and you could run the whole store one day.”

  Christmas looked at him, thinking. “Did Ruth ask you to ask me?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not interested in being a salesman,” said Christmas. “I’ve got something else in mind.”

  “I am in your debt,” said the old man. “Luck is a kick in the pants that life gives you so you can move a step forward. Luck, when you’re a grown-up, it’s a possibility you shouldn’t waste.”

  “And I’m not going to waste it, believe me.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Would you ever think of letting Ruth marry a store manager?” asked Christmas.

  “No. I want something better for my grandchild.”

  “So do I.”

  “What’s in your mind, boy?”

  “Ruth is my luck. Not you, Mister Isaacson.”

  “Ruth is Jewish, you’re Italian.”

  “I’m an American.”

  “Oy! Don’t be stupid.”

  “I’m an American.”

  “Maybe so, but you’re not a Jew. And Ruth will marry a Jew.”

  “Well, she’s going to love me,” Christmas said angrily.

  The old man laughed, but it sounded forced. The boy had intense dark eyes, just as he’d remembered. They also looked unwavering. As if he had all at once become a man.

  “That’s the chance luck gave me,” said Christmas. “And I don’t intend to waste it, like you say.”

  Old Saul Isaacson glared at Christmas, brandishing his cane. “From this moment on you don’t see Ruth. I forbid it,” he said.

  Christmas smiled, challenging him. “But you still feel you owe me something? A debt?”

  “Not to that degree.”

  “No, I was thinking about the job offer,” said Christmas. “I’ve got the right person for you.”

  “I’m not making donations today.”

  “When I found Ruth, my friend was with me. He ought to be able to use luck too. And your gratitude.”

  The old Jew looked intensely at Christmas. “So? Who would that be? Another schmoozer like you?”

  “No, sir. Santo is a born stock clerk.”

  “Santo?”

  “Santo Filesi. He can read and write. He’s honest.”

  Saul Isaacson wagged his head from left to right. “All right then,” he grumbled at last. “Tell him to be here tomorrow morning at nine sharp if he wants that job,” then he pointed the cane at Christmas. “But you, you stay away from Ruth.”

  “No, sir. You’d have to have Greenie beat the shit out of me. But if he didn’t kill me … I’d get right back up again,” Christmas said resolutely, turning away and walking out of the office.

  As he left, Christmas heard the old man’s cane crash furiously against the desk three times. Then came a dry crack, like a branch breaking.

  The next day Santo greeted the old gentleman with a brand new cane that Christmas had obtained free from a neighborhood junk dealer after implying that it was for a big boss who’d hired the Diamond Dogs. The Number One Guy, in person. The junk dealer had proffered his finest walking stick: silver knob, seasoned African ebony ferrule, the reinforced tip was silver, too.

  “It’s from Christmas,” said Santo at nine o’clock sharp, offering it to his new employer. “He said it was very resistant.”

  Saul Isaacson snatched it out of his hand and raised it in the air, ready to hit him. Then suddenly he roared with laughter and hired Santo at a salary of twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents a week.

  By the beginning of autumn the old man was dead.

  Dr. Goldsmith, the family doctor, said that he had told Saul Isaacson to lead a more regular life, to avoid effort and rages, to reduce his workload, to eat in moderation and to stop smoking. But, according to Dr. Goldsmith, the old man had replied, “I should live like a sick man just so I can die healthy?” So the founder of Saul Isaacson’s Clothing — one of the most successful manufacturers of textiles and ready-to-wear in all of New York State — died of a heart attack.

  And Ruth thought, I’m so cold.

  She hadn’t been able to shed a single tear. It was as if her whole body had frozen in an instant. Only the stump of her amputated finger throbbed with a sharp pain. Like a shriek. Nothing else. Even that was frozen. And even though the days were still warm, Ruth wrapped herself in heavy sweaters and cashmere scarves. Still she couldn’t stop feeling cold.

  She sat stiffly in her grandfather’s chair, hoping to find some echo of the warmth that her irascible, affectionate grandfather had always communicated to her. All around her, the mirrors in the house were draped in black cloth while her father recited the Kaddish. No one in the huge house shed a single tear. Not her father, who had let his beard grow, as tradition required. Not her mother, but perhaps she’d never known how to cry, thought Ruth.

  On the day of the funeral, announced in all the papers, the cemetery was filled with factory workers, men and women, in their drab clothes and black armbands. They kept their eyes cast down, the men with yarmulkes. And in the front row, on either side of Ruth and her parents, there were elegantly dressed men and women, from their world, from the business world, and competitors as well. Ruth still felt cold. She still hadn’t been able to weep for that man she had so greatly loved.

  Ruth’s father spoke. But he didn’t tell about who Grandpa Saul really was. He spoke about when he’d arrived from Europe, about how he had founded Saul Isaacson’s Clothing, about how he had succeeded in business.

  Asher Mankiewicz, the chief tailor, spoke, but he only said that Ruth’s grandfather had been tough but fair, and that he had understood clothes and fashion. One workman — speaking for all the others — just said he’d been a good Jew, respectful of their traditions. Some of his competitors spoke, but all they said was that he’d kept them on their toes, that he always seemed to be one step ahead of everyone else, and that he was the one among all of them who always ended up with the least unsold merchandise at the end of the season. At last it was the rabbi’s turn, and he said that Grandfather had always punctually taken his place in the synagogue, that he had been generous in his gifts to the Jewish community, that he’d never missed any bris or bar mitzvah he’d been formally invited to and that — as far as he knew — he had always eaten kosher.

  Then the coffin began to descend into the hole.

  I’m alone, she t
hought, surrounded by all those people.

  “And with his walking stick he could hit harder than Babe Ruth,” a voice beside her said just then, just loudly enough for the people in the front row to hear.

  Ruth and all the others turned. Christmas wore a ridiculous crocheted yarmulke, multicolored, set too far forward on his head and a little bit askew.

  And suddenly Ruth began to weep. All the tears she had been unable to unleash in those days. All of them at once, like an irresistible river overflowing its banks, like a glacier melting, giving back to her the heat that this death had stolen from her. Her legs gave way, and as she fell to her knees she put her hands over her eyes, trying to staunch the terrible liquefied leakage of pain that had opened up in her.

  Christmas was next to her, he too kneeling, an arm around her shoulders, trying to contain the sobs that were shaking her.

  “I’m here now,” he murmured in her ear.

  “Ruth! Ruth!” said her mother in a sharp stage whisper, “Don’t make a spectacle of yourself!”

  “This is a funeral, boy, not a circus,” said Ruth’s father, tugging at Christmas’ arm, trying to lift him to his feet.

  But Christmas held Ruth in his arms.

  “Do something, Philip,” the mother’s stridulate voice went on. “She’s making us look ridiculous.”

  “Greenie! Greenie!” called the father.

  The green-suited gangster shouldered his way to the grave where Saul Isaacson lay. He took Christmas firmly by the shoulders and lifted him by force.

  “Take him away,” ordered Ruth’s father.

  “Don’t make me have to sock you in front o’ all these people,” Greenie said quietly to Christmas.

  Christmas helped Ruth to her feet and gently touched her tear-soaked face. “I’ll miss you,” he said.

  Ruth sobbed even more desperately and clung to Christmas.

  “Stop that, Ruth!” cried her mother, sounding hysterical.

  “Take him away,” the father ordered Greenie again.

  “Come on, kid,” said Greenie, tightening his grip on Christmas’ arm.