Old News

by Ed Ifkovic

  Ezra squirmed. “I couldn’t reach him.”

  Herman persisted. “I can’t get a picture of it, Jacob falling, toppling.” A sneer. “With you at his side.”

  Ezra spoke through clenched teeth. “You have more of an interest in your brother now than in all the years he walked these streets.” He glanced up and down Monroe Street.

  “What does that mean?”

  “C’mon, Herman. You never liked Jacob.”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “You saw him as a lazy, foolish poet, some silly boy who looked like your mother and flirted with the girls.”

  “He’s my brother!” Yelling now.

  Ezra insisted, “I’m the one who was his friend. Me, Herman, my boy. And Ad next door. His own family laughed at him.”

  Herman stepped closer. “For three years now you slink around here since our mother is back home. You don’t think I hear about that? Uncle Ezra, knocking on the door. Uncle Ezra, bringing baskets of food. Uncle Ezra, taking little Jacob for a ride in his tin lizzie. Uncle Ezra taking Jacob for a boat ride on the river. Ezra, Ezra, Ezra.”

  Ezra snarled, “So what?”

  “The truth is that I don’t think you ever cared for Jacob. It’s my mother you were visiting.”

  Uncle Ezra glanced at the Newmann porch. Minna had stood up, moving closer to the front steps, though Molly reached out to touch her elbow. “Meaning?”

  “You know damn well what it means. You’ve crawled around here for years now, even when Papa was alive. He knew it. He warned you. I heard him tell you to get lost. Mama tossed you over for Papa but that didn’t stop you. Flattering, smiling, laughing, a silly little boy. My father warned you to stay away.” He faltered. “A…a shedim…you demon.”

  Ezra said nothing, checking out the quiet street. He glanced up into the sky, watching for the thundershowers. The sky was darkening. Finally, he grumbled, “A street brawl, Herman? Is that what you’re reduced to?”

  Red-faced, Herman poked him in the chest. “The way you ogled my mother.”

  Ezra stepped back, unsure of his footing. “Everyone watched your mother, dear Herman. A beautiful woman. Ivan liked that. He had his precious little doll. He got meaner and meaner as he got older and older, jealous, cruel.”

  Herman’s voice was a low rumble. Another poke in the chest. Ezra flinched. “You want to jump back into her life now. You want to go back to when you were young and…and you thought you’d be marrying her.” Unwittingly, he spun around and stared at Minna on the porch. It was a knee-jerk reaction, its meaning not lost on himself, or me, or doubtless the listening Minna. She tensed up, a trickle of tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “C’mon,” Herman’s wife pleaded, tugging his sleeve. “Do you realize how foolish the two of you look in the street? Street urchins, pushcart boys.”

  Herman ignored her.

  Ezra put his face close to Herman’s—and suddenly, bending his neck, spat onto the pavement. Herman sucked in his breath.

  The door behind me swung open and Ad, hearing the brouhaha in the street, stormed out, slamming the screen door behind him. “Jesus Christ,” he yelled, “what’s going on out here? I’m in the kitchen…” He hesitated. “Minna?” She stood there, crumpled up, tears on her cheeks. “What the hell happened?”

  “Ad,” I began, “it’s nothing. Don’t…”

  “Minna, what’s the matter?” He glanced toward the skirmish in the street. At that moment, regrettably, Herman heard Ad’s bluster and turned, though his eyes rested on Minna. Ad fumed. “What did he say to you?”

  “Nothing,” she muttered.

  “Ad,” I went on. “Nothing.”

  Molly said to him, “Go back into the house, Adolph.”

  Ignoring her, Ad touched Minna’s shoulder, a quick, comforting gesture that made her sob harder, which in turn enflamed him. Always the neighborhood knight, the tilter of imaginary windmills, Ad repeated, “Minna, did he say something to hurt you?”

  She shook her head vigorously and tried to smile. “I don’t know why I’m crying, Ad. It’s all this…yelling…Herman and Ezra…in the street. Jacob is dying and…”

  Her words ignited Ad’s temper, and he pounded one fist into the other. Madness—the next act in this silly street revue, men acting like loutish boys.

  “Herman,” Ad yelled.

  But Herman ignored Ad’s fury. Instead, he’d turned back to Ezra who was sneering something about the roly-poly burgher in the rumpled suit. Herman said something unintelligible and stepped back. He nodded at Naomi, though she regarded him coolly, then sought Emma who’d stepped off the sidewalk and was standing in a clump of bushes.

  He took a step away.

  But Ezra, still raging, lunged forward and, thrusting out his arm, slapped his nephew full in the face.

  So resounding and unexpected a blow, so marrow-deep ugly, so…so wrong. I breathed in, and Minna, behind me, cried out, “No!” She started to hiccough.

  Stunned, Herman blubbered, rubbed his face with his palm, and sputtered, “You…”

  Emboldened. Ezra pushed his palm against Herman’s chest, and Herman stepped to the side. His foot turned and he nearly toppled, but he grabbed onto Ezra’s sleeve. His uncle shrugged him off, but slapped his face again. Herman bellowed but then, grunting, hunched over and plowed his head into Ezra’s chest. Ezra let out an oomph sound, the air out of a balloon, and staggered back against the fender of his car.

  Out of breath, heaving, the two men stared at each other, eyes hooded. An ugly space between then, wrestlers ready to grapple.

  Suddenly Herman’s eyes found Minna, locked eyes with her.

  Ad, incensed, flew off the porch, nearly falling over, and stood between both men. He spun around, furious, pointing first at Herman, then at Ezra.

  From the bushes, bent over as though in pain, Emma whimpered, “Jacob. Think of Jacob.”

  Ezra stormed at her. “Yeah, you love your brother, little sister.”

  She cried out, hurt.

  Ad yelled at Ezra, though his frantic glance took in Herman. “Yeah—Jacob. How he hated the way you…you followed his mother. He stopped. “Evil Ezra.”

  Brutal, frightening words, belligerent. Ezra scrunched up his face. “You—you hypocrite. Ivan warned all the boys…even you.”

  Ad made a fist, but it was Herman, rubbing his cheek and breathing hard, who gripped Ad’s arm. “No, no. He’s not worth it.”

  But Ad would have none of it. Hotheaded, spinning around like a wobbly top, he wasn’t sure what to do. Back on the porch, Minna was rocking, mewing loudly, her tiny hands fluttering around her face like jittery birds. “Ad, no, no. Please.” Her voice hollow, words so mumbled that only I could hear her.

  “Damn you, Ezra.” Ad was panting. “Jacob dying—my buddy.” His voice a ragged blend of yelling and sobbing now, sailing over the street. “He wanted you away from the house—because of his mother. He went with you to keep you from coming into the house.”

  “Nonsense,” Ezra hissed. “Funny, though. These last days the only person he’d see was…me. Not you, Ad—he kicked everybody away from him. Only me. Me.”

  A long, dead space. Ad spat out, “You thought that he killed his father…” He stopped. “He told me you kept asking him—‘What do you remember? That day. Tell me. Tell me.’ Why did you ask?”

  “Because he knew something.”

  The words made Ad see red. Blindly, he thrust out his arm at Ezra, an ineffective jab that grazed his cheek. Surprised, Ezra punched the air, grunting, but immediately grabbed onto Ad’s sleeve, tearing it.

  “Goddamn you,” Ad swore, and spinning around, yanked Ezra’s necktie, bunching it in his fingers.

  Ezra made a gurgling sound, stumbled, but, sidestepping around Ad, lunged at Herman who’d taken a step toward him. Ezra barreled into him and Herman stagger
ed back. Getting his footing, Herman assumed a cartoonish pugilist’s stance, one foot in front of the other, fists thrust out in front of him, elbows bent.

  A dark laugh escaped Ezra’s throat as he pointed at Herman, mocking his ridiculous stance. Dancing around Herman, Ezra didn’t expect his nephew’s sudden punch to the mouth. Ad laughed out loud.

  Ezra, mumbling that Ad should get out of the way—“Mind your own goddamn business”— ran the back of his hand across his mouth. A smear of blood from a cut lip. He whimpered, blubbered “Blood, blood,” as Herman, still in that outlandish pose of a gentleman boxer, rocked on his heels.

  Ad shot a look back at the porch. Minna was sobbing. He hesitated—waiting. But I realized—and he realized—that Minna was staring at Herman, her body trembling.

  Huffing, head bobbing like a circus clown, Ad crashed into Herman, who toppled back and bounced off a car fender. He slapped at Herman’s face, but Herman kept striking out, loose-limbed swings that missed his target. Circling the other two men, Ezra poked and jabbed, the pesky gnat. Herman kicked Ezra’s shin, and he howled. The three men slammed against one another. A tangle of awkward bodies—tripping, bumping, arms and legs that aimed but mostly missed. Roustabout vaudeville slapstick. Helter-skelter sad sack comics executing exaggerated kicks that knocked them off balance.

  Then, out of the tangle of flailing arms, a vagrant kick—Ad’s foot into Ezra’s groin. The old man bellowed, fell to his knees, and cried out.

  Exhausted, the men fell apart, bodies sprawled on the hot pavement, Ezra moaning, Ad wheezing, Herman’s breath a scratchy rasp.

  Over—the slapdash scuffle of men who never thought they’d ever raise a fist at another. A trickle of blood across Ezra’s cheek. Herman picked street gravel from a bruise on his forehead. Ad’s head buried in his shoulder, a patch of bare flesh exposed where his shirt had ripped.

  It was over—we waited. A stunned Greek chorus, we held our breath. Emma whimpered in the bushes. Minna had fallen into a chair, her face buried in her lands. Naomi had disappeared—I spotted her inside the car, the door open.

  An eerie silence—only the labored breathing of the men.

  Herman rolled onto his knees. Ad struggled to sit up. He grasped Ezra’s forearm, pulled him into a sitting position.

  A crackle of thunder, the sky suddenly dark and awful, the air heavy, the setting sun masked. In the distant sky a flash of lightning, brilliant. Big droplets began to fall, splat splat splat on the hot pavement. Hobbling, bent at the waist, Ezra hurried to put up the top of his convertible, clumsily falling into the automobile. He rested his head on the steering wheel. Herman groaned as he lumbered to his car to crank up his windows, then sat still inside, his head inclined against the seat rest. Only Ad didn’t move. Standing now, he wrapped his arms around his chest, swaying. Raindrops covered him. He was sobbing.

  Dark now, the storm gathering steam.

  One drop, another, plop plop. Splat. A hot breeze blew rain onto the porch. The thick-leafed maples rustled. No one moved now, Ezra and Herman still in their cars. Naomi in the passenger seat, facing out, the door still open.

  The front door of the Brenner home opened, and Leah walked out onto the porch. She’d been home all along, though she was dressed in a nightgown and robe, as though she’d spent the afternoon napping under the covers. She walked to the edge of the porch, looked up at the looming heavens, and then at her family. Her confused glance swept from Emma to the Newmann porch. Her eyes rested on Ad, still standing in the street, shoulders heaving, sobbing. Seeing her, Herman stepped out of the car.

  The rains broke, ferocious, hard.

  She spoke to Herman, her voice flat. “They just called me, the doctors. My Jacob is dead.”

  Dripping wet, Herman sucked in his breath, but then pointed at Emma who was running toward the porch. “No one cries. Do you hear me? No one cries. I don’t want tears.”

  A strange line that made little sense.

  But Leah, watching him, began to cry.

  Chapter Nineteen

  After the funeral, Sarah invited everyone back to the house where Leah sat quietly on a low chair, stunned, lovely in her dark sadness. No one spoke to her, though a few approached, began words of consolation, but then, startled by the stark upturned face, retreated, apologetic. Hers was, I told myself, the frozen face she wore fifteen years ago—the haunted look that greeted the police when they first arrived at her doorstep. That unfathomable mask that led them, in their glib dismissal, to assume her guilt. Now, tucked into a chair in a corner of the room, her arms wrapped around her body, her feet planted solidly on the floor as though she feared she’d lose her balance, Leah occasionally surveyed the small group of mourners gathered in her home. Surprise there, and wonder. What was wrong with this day?

  She was dressed in a dull black silk dress with a frilly lace collar, ankle-length and a little worn at the seams. A small black ribbon pinned to her chest. A dress from an earlier century, found in an unused closet, with a musty mothball scent, though she looked seductive, the alluring grief-stricken woman, the alabaster skin and the snow-white hair and the black-shadowed, inky eyes. A Renaissance portrait, this woman, painted by Raphael. She reminded me of another Jewish mother, grieving over a crucified son.

  An exaggeration, of course, my words, on the impact of her sitting there. Such beauty that was paradoxically so unapproachable.

  Sarah buzzed around, officious, greeting the scattered few who came into the home. The presence of Leah, returned from her confinement, must have kept many away, though others visited out of perverse curiosity. A gaggle of loose-limbed middle-aged men in a pack came out of love for the hapless Jacob, a man who’d made so many women smile or wilt or fantasize. Most of the women stayed away.

  Sarah urged the few of us to try the whitefish. She kept whispering, “It’s from Lyon’s Delicatessen,” as if that imprimatur would create appetite in us. “Eat, eat,” she hummed. “B’rith Abraham delivered it. An offering.”

  My mother nibbled on a bit of fish on a piece of bread. Earlier that morning, before we’d dressed for Jacob’s funeral at Congregation Sinai, with Rabbi Glickman officiating, she’d packed her hidebound travel trunk and pushed it into the hallway outside her bedroom door. Her brocade valise was open on a stand in the room, pieces of clothing placed inside. When she saw me watching her, she nodded toward my room.

  “Best be ready, Edna.”

  For, in fact, early the next morning we’d be leaving the Newmann household, headed for Hyde Park and the Windermere Hotel, where my luxurious rooms were ready. Quiet days, long walks, outdoor concerts at Ravinia. During the rest of the long hot summer, away from the Newmann home, I planned on finishing my novel. Serial publication as “Selina” in Women’s Home Companion that fall, a book from Doubleday next spring, probably as So Big, then painful oblivion for me as a writer—my feeble tale of a battered farm wife and her contemporary, shallow son. A book in which nothing happened, the climax a wagon ride to market in the deep of night. I feared a scolding letter from Nelson Doubleday himself.

  “No, Mother, that can wait,” I’d told her. “A little unseemly to pack now. We have a funeral…”

  She’d interrupted. “Unseemly? Edna, I’d suggest you rethink your vocabulary. After all, your horrible behavior set into motion this…this catastrophe.”

  “That’s cruel.”

  “But true.”

  “All I wanted was justice for an innocent woman.”

  She’d smacked her head, dramatically. “After all this”—she pointed through walks toward the Brenner household—“you still persist…”

  “I know now who killed Ivan.”

  She’d gasped and peered down the staircase from the landing. “Quiet, Edna. For God’s sake. You know nothing of the sort.”

  I’d whispered to her. “Things have happened and it seems to me…”

  She’d
interrupted, pulling her face close to mine. “It seems to me that you’re going to accuse an innocent person—and the nightmare you’ve created will continue, worse than ever. Leah Brenner killed her husband, Edna. Can’t you get that through your thick skull?”

  I’d held her eye. “Oh, I don’t think so. I know so. Because the pieces fit together, maybe sketchily, though I regret them.” A long, deep sigh. “But I don’t know how to prove it—after fifteen years.”

  “Then leave it alone. We have a funeral to go to, Edna.”

  “For Jacob’s sake, and for his mother’s, the murderer must be named. There has to be a rightness to things.”

  For a second she’d closed her eyes. “It’s going to be a long day.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right, Mother.” I’d whispered to myself, “For once.”

  ***

  Someone was saying something to me, so I focused. Emma Brenner was talking about her mother. “Jacob was always her favorite. I suppose because when you saw his face, you saw her. The rest of us—Ella, Herman, me—took after our father—the unlovely children. There were too many mirrors in this house to look into. Jacob was the only one who liked them.”

  Mirrors on the walls, though thankfully covered today.

  “You’re hard on yourself, Emma.”

  She tossed her head back. “I’m a realist, Edna.” Then, a crooked grin, she added, “How the world loved poor Jacob. The girls giggled and fussed. Once, in shul, sitting quietly on Yom Kippur no less, humble, the rabbi found a note on the floor, Jacob’s name on it, dropped by an anonymous girl. Girls followed him off the streetcars, boys wanted to be his friend. Everyone wanted to walk with him. He had it all.” A melancholy tone entered her voice. “Except ambition. A dreamer, my brother. But sad all these years since…that day…”

  “Yes, he took his father’s death hard. The breakdown.” I watched her face closely.

  She shook her head back and forth. “Not because of Papa, Edna. Because of what happened to Mama. Too sensitive, Jacob always was. Even as a boy he’d hide away, lips trembling, acting out parts from the dime novels we all read. The murder”—she glanced across the room at her mother—“the murder leveled him. You know, I think he was waiting to die from that day on, spiraling downward, waiting, waiting. You could see it in his eyes. He was never happy again. Something…drained out of him. I believe some people wait for death—they decide that. It’s like the book is done with. I’d catch him crying, alone, slumped over in the bushes outside. We thought we’d lose him that first time, that awful breakdown.” She clicked her tongue. “And now we have.”