“She could wear it for school. Come on, Ruthie. You show papa the way to Mrs. Monchik’s.”
“Don’t let Mrs. Monchik talk you into anything expensive, Irving. She’ll try to sell you a coat like Marjorie’s. I know her. Don’t let her talk you in. Do you hear?”
“I hear,” said Irving, kissing her goodbye.
“Get something serviceable, Irving. Something not too fancy for poor people. We don’t have to dress our child up like Katz’s. Don’t do anything foolish, Irving.”
“You know me!” said Irving.
She did.
After he had safely turned the corner she went to the phone. Mrs. Monchik was just opening the Tots’ Shop for the day.
“Sure! I understand perfectel. Yes, I remember—the velvet coat with the beaver. Don’t worry! He wouldn’t get away without the coat. I could sell a man any day easier than a woman. A man is a cinch to sell. I got it in the winder already—the coat and the hat. And Mrs. Apfel, you should worry, huh, if he takes along a yella organdie dress like Marjorie Katz’s and effsche a hand-embroidered Princess slip for under, huh, Mrs. Apfel? Don’t worry! I know your taste—champagne. You could trust me, Mrs. Apfel.”
And Mrs. Apfel did.
* * * *
The invitation arrived for the engagement party of Irving’s brother Sidney and Helen Stern, Thanksgiving eve, at the Ritz.
“I’ll write Mrs. Stem and explain why we can’t go,” said Bessie.
“How d’ye mean, we can’t go?”
“How can I go? In a shirt waist and skirt?”
“Where’s your evening dress?”
“That old black one I got two years ago?”
“Yeh, that black one you always looked so good in.”
“It was torn and I made a bathing suit out of it last summer.”
“Th—th—you shouldn’t have done it. Maybe with a little fixing you could have wore it.”
“Well, I needed a bathing suit, and I thought this year—”
“Well, you’ll have to get yourself a little evening dress.”
“I should say not! What do poor people need with evening dresses?”
“For my brother’s engagement—”
“For one night I should spend a hundred dollars on an evening dress?”
“It wouldn’t need to cost you a hundred dollars. You’ll buy a piece goods and make a dress. What’ll it cost you?”
“It won’t cost me anything, Irving, because I need my money for other things.”
“Who’s talking your money? Buy the goods and I’ll give you what you lay out.”
“It’s not only a dress, Irving. Slippers and stockings and—”
“Nu? Does my brother get engaged every day? You could wear the same things to the wedding.”
“Is it worth while getting bankrupt just for one night?”
“Frisch! Gesund! Meschuge! Do people get bankrupt from buying once a piece goods for a dress?”
“Well, fifty dollars here, a hundred there—”
“Don’t talk foolish! Go tomorrow and get it! You ain’t got much time.”
The next night he asked her, “Well, did you get the goods for the dress?”
“N—no, Irving. Do you really think we can af—”
“Bessie, I don’t want to hear no more from this nonsense. Ain’t it enough I’m telling you it’s all right? Get it tomorrow! Remember, you only got till a week from Sunday!”
The next night he asked her again, “Did you get the goods?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Well, there was only one piece at Steinberg’s I liked and it was too much money.”
“How much?”
“Forty dollars. Isn’t that ridiculous? And there was nothing else I’d take for a present. You know, I’m not in love with the whole idea. I don’t think we can af—”
Irving pulled a roll of money from his pocket.
“Here! I don’t want to hear no more! Tomorrow you’ll get it, if that’s the only thing that’ll make you happy.”
“But shoes—”
“Shoes too—whatever you need!”
Sunday he asked her, “Well, how’s the dress coming along?”
“I didn’t start it yet.”
“You didn’t! When you going to begin?”
“I don’t know. I’m sort of scared to cut into it—such dear goods. I might spoil it alone.”
“Couldn’t you get someone to help you?”
“Well, I don’t like to ask mamma. When I had the fight with her about you being stingy she said I’d be asking her before long for help.”
“No, don’t ask her favors. I’ll give you the money. Hire somebody.”
Monday night showed no progress. Bessie had been unable to hire anybody—neither did Tuesday. Irving grew excited.
“How you going to get it finished if here it’s Tuesday night and you didn’t begin it yet? What you going to do?”
“The only one I can think of is Miss Brush. But she’s estimate and she gets thirty-five dollars for the needle—”
“If we got to have it we got to have it. Take her the goods—here’s the money!”
“Oh, no, I’ll have her send you the bill—in case she needs anything extra for trimming. It seems a shame to spend all that money—”
“Don’t begin that again!”
“I was going to say—and then wear such a shabby coat!”
“Who’ll see the coat? You’ll go in quick and check it. We’ll get there early and we’ll leave late. Nobody’ll see the coat.”
* * * *
The dress was a wonderful success—quite the prettiest dress Bessie Apfel had ever owned. Irving was beaming. In spite of the fact that the dress, and so forth, had left him no change out of a century and a quarter he was in high good humor. He liked going out. Especially when his wife looked—unberufen.
“And here,” remarked said wife, “is a surprise!” And held up for inspection a moleskin coat.
“Wh—wh—”
“Don’t get excited! It isn’t mine. Rosie Katz loaned it to me.”
“It’s an elegant coat.”
“You bet! Mannie made some money on the side and blew her. It must have cost at least eight hundred dollars. He must be an awfully smart fellow. Just think of making eight hundred dollars on one deal!”
“Pooh!” began Irving, but thought better of it.
Bessie pirouetted slowly before the forward-tilted mirror of her white-enamel bureau.
“She’s a darling to lend it to me. I was over today to leave Ruthie there for the night, and when Rosie heard I had to wear my old Hudson seal she offered herself to lend me this. But you know, Irv, she had an altogether wrong idea about you. She thought you were tight—you know, stingy about buying me things.
“Of course I set her right. I explained that we just can’t afford to have the things they have, because your business doesn’t throw off enough—”
“Looka here, Bessie! You got to learn not to talk about my business!”
“Oh, I didn’t, Irving! I didn’t say a word about your business. All I said was it didn’t throw off enough for us to have the things they have. You give me all you can afford, and if we were to spend more than we do it would hurt the business.”
“Bessie!”
“And maybe you’d go bankrupt.”
“Bessie, are you crazy? You fool, you—”
He began to pace up and down the bedroom furiously, clenched fist pounding into open palm behind his back. “Don’t you know Mannie Katz is the cashier in my bank? Ain’t you got nothing in your head but emptiness? How do you think it helps my standing if you go round and telling the world I’m going bankrupt? How do you think I’m going to look when I go to my bank for an accommodation after my wi
fe tells the cashier I’m going bust?”
“Oh, no, Irving; I didn’t say you were going bust, because you’re not! I’m going to see that you don’t. I only said that if you drew out more than the forty dollars a week you give me you’d be bankrupt. You said it yourself. Those were your very—”
“But what I say to you you don’t have to tell Mannie Katz, do you?”
“Oh, we needn’t bluff them! Rosie sees the way I do my own work and she knows I haven’t had a new rag all season, and Mannie even remarked that I used to dress so well and you must have had a bad year. Well, I didn’t want to say that mamma used to buy my clothes—I was ashamed—so I didn’t say anything.”
“Come on, we’ll be late to the engagement.” Irving’s face was devoid of beam. “Only don’t wear that woman’s coat.”
“You’re right, Irving. People would think it was mine and that we were full of money, and I hate bluff.” She slipped into her old Hudson seal. “There, that’s better! It’s more suitable for a poor man’s wife. No use giving people the impression you’re something you aren’t.”
“It don’t look bad—that coat.”
“No, it’s not torn or anything. Besides, if I wore the other, people might begin to wonder where we got the money from.”
“You ain’t going to leave it laying round the room, are you?”
“Oh, no, of course not! Would you mind running over to Rosie’s and telling her you don’t like me to—”
“Positively not! I wouldn’t go near that—we ain’t got time!”
“Maybe just for safety’s sake I better wear it.”
“Well,” replied her husband, “maybe you better.”
By the time they reached the Ritz, Irving was beaming 16-k beams all over the place. He did like to go out. Especially an occasion like this—it didn’t happen every day—and things had been very quiet for him lately—oh, very quiet!
And as the evening progressed his radiant good humor increased in volume and intensity until not even his brother Sidney—not even the father of the girl—outbeamed him. Well, nobody had nothing on Bessie. You had to give it to that girl—she was a picture, she should live in health. Everybody was talking about her. She was the center of everything. Women, girls, old men, young men—all paid her tribute. How the sight of it all warmed the very cockles of his heart—wherever they are. Look at her over there with old man Kopitz of the Popular Bank, and Professor Abrahams, the great Abrahams from West End Avenue, who had brought her into the world twenty-five years before. Two real somebodies, and how they were enjoying themselves with Bessie. Irving wondered what they were laughing at so much. Vaguely he felt that they were talking about him.
He excused himself from Blossom Stern, who was a nice girl but miess, and crossed the room. But just before he reached them, Kopitz’s son, Stanley Cobb, had whirled her away in a waltz. The two old men greeted him cordially.
“Well,” said old man Kopitz, “I don’t have to ask you how things are going. I can see for myself. Your wife looks like the Queen of Jerusalem.”
Irving put to shame every incandescent bulb in the place.
“A man must be dragging a bushel of money out of the flower-and-feather business,” went on the banker, “to doll a woman up like that these days. How many lofts you got now, Irving?”
“Two,” replied Irving modestly, “in the Ganimede Building.”
“Two lofts in the Ganimede Building!” The banker shook a white-fringed head from side to side like the figure of the China mandarin on his mother’s whatnot. “And I remember when he went peddling for Levy and Gutlohn! It seems like yesterday. Two lofts! But the minute I saw Mrs. Irving looking like a million dollars I knew. I used to think to myself, there’s the boy that’s the future flower-and-feather king of this country. Now I know it. You’re a coming man, Irving. Why don’t you drop in and see me some time—at the Popular?”
Somebody claimed his attention and he drifted away. Irving turned his effulgent face toward the doctor.
“Bessie is a good advertisement, isn’t she?” remarked the professor.
Irving was too full for words. He merely nodded.
“I tell you, Apfel, it pays a man to keep his wife looking right. No man ever got any further from crying poor. Prosperity makes prosperity. I bet if he hadn’t seen Bessie he wouldn’t have remembered that he always thought you would be the flower-and-feather king of this country, heh, Apfel?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” replied the heir apparent.
“Well, I’m glad you’re getting along so well, Apfel. And I’m glad to see you’re taking such good care of Bessie. She looks fine. Don’t let her work too hard. She’s inclined to go into things too strong. She’ll stand it for a while and then she’ll go to pieces all of a sudden. But I don’t have to tell you. A man like you wouldn’t let a girl like Bessie do a day’s work if he had to pawn his shirt to hire someone to help her. We Jewish men know how to take care of our wives, heh, Apfel?”
* * * *
“Bessie,” remarked Irving on the way home in the taxi, “how much costs such a coat?”
“Oh, about eight hundred dollars.”
“Bessie, go order one.”
“What? You must be crazy, Irving! We can’t afford such a thing!”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it seems like a lot of money, but a fur coat ain’t a thing you buy every day.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Irving! For a woman who does her own work—”
“I was going to say, Bessie, you got to get a girl. It ain’t right for you to go on working so hard. All of a sudden you’ll go to pieces.”
“Irving, the engagement must have gone to your head! Do you want to go bankrupt?”
“Don’t get excited, I wouldn’t go bankrupt! My business is going very good.”
“Even if it is, no business is so good that you can draw out all the cream.”
“Listen, Bessie! We only live once. And now while we’re young—”
“But, Irving, we have to save! Sickness or trouble—”
“We’ll save too.”
“Irving, you talk as if your business was the Standard Oil.”
He commenced to laugh.
“To hear you talk, Bessie, you’d think I didn’t know what I could take out from my own business. Why, Bessie, last year I made—”
There was a little awkward pause, while Bessie waited expectantly and Irving gave a little cough.
“I made a lot of money,” he concluded.
“Oh,” said Bessie, “you think everything is a lot of money! You thought forty dollars a week was a lot of money! Now Mannie Katz—”
“Hah!” Irving exploded. “Mannie Katz! Why, I make three times what that piker draws a year.” This time Bessie laughed.
“Oh, Irving! You’d be making twelve thousand dollars a year!”
“Well?”
There was a little pregnant silence and then Bessie murmured, “I don’t believe it.”
“What d’ye mean you don’t believe it? D’ye think I’m lying?”
“Oh, no! I mean—you must be mistaken.”
“What d’ye mean mistaken? It’s on the books.”
“Maybe you made a mistake in figuring it up.”
“Say, ain’t I got for twenty dollars a week a bookkeeper? Ain’t there such a thing as trial balances and—”
“Anyway, I can’t believe it.”
Irving was angry.
“Looka here, Bessie! You’ll come in my office the next time you’re downtown and I’ll show you on the books if I’m a liar.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that! Only—oh, Irving, you must be joking!”
“I tell you I ain’t!”
“The next thing you’ll be telling me I ought to spend a hundred dollars a week for the house!”
He took it on high
.
“From now on I bring you home a hundred dollars a week for the house. And I don’t want no saving on it neither, d’ye hear? I’m full up to the neck from this saving.”
* * * *
Sometimes when Bessie Apfel comes into her husband’s loft and casts an expert eye over his ledgers, seemingly quite at home with columns and credits, debits and trial balances, a quizzical look comes into the eye of the future F and F king of America. Almost he suspects that he has in some ways underrated her.
Could she really, in spite of that au secours look in her eyes, be so very smart—even smarter than—It does not seem possible, and yet—
How was it the very day after his brother’s engagement Mrs. Levinson, who had not shown an orthopedically shod toe inside his home in six weeks, appeared, smiling as though nothing had happened?
And that very same day Annie reappeared, seemingly untouched by employment sharks in a period of almost two months in spite of her jewel-like qualities.
And once, seeing Ruth start off for school in her old coat, he wondered why it had seemed so awfully short to him before and why her arms had seemed to dangle so impotently from the sleeves, whereas now she did not look so very bad in it.
And at these times he tries to remember just how it was he began to let his wife look over his books—a thing he had always disapproved of. For once you let a woman see how much money you are making—and pcht! She has a use for all of it.
But not Bessie of course. Bessie was different. Bessie’s fault lay the other way. Bessie had a tendency to be—well, saving. What a job he had had to make her take that moleskin coat that was really a bargain because of Rosie Katz deciding at the last minute she didn’t like it! And how Bessie looked in it! She did a man credit, Bessie did.
He took pains to explain it to her.
“You got to look nice Bessie. Prosperity makes prosperity. If you go round looking like a schnorrer’s wife, soon everybody’ll have me bankrupted. You dassent make a poor face, Bessie. We can’t afford it.”
MATZOTHS CAST UPON THE WATERS
Irving Apfel’s rather good-looking countenance screwed itself violently toward the left and then jerked spasmodically toward the right in an involuntary effort to follow, in the bathroom mirror, the erratic contortions of a particularly unreasonable full-dress tie.
The Viola Brothers Shore Mystery Page 26
