The Family Markowitz

by Allegra Goodman

  “But the pen-pen-penalties,” Henry interrupts.

  “What penalties? They’re negligible; she won’t incur any—”

  “What about some combination? Or a fund—” Sarah suggests.

  “I don’t like those funds, and I’ll tell you why,” Ed declares. “Anything they call a product is something that’s packaged to be of the utmost convenience to them, and anything they call a—”

  “Out! Out! All of you,” Rose bursts out. “I can’t bear it.”

  “Do you want to do this another day?” Sarah asks sympathetically.

  “No!” Ed says. “I don’t have another day.”

  “I want to speak to Dick. Alone,” Rose tells them. “Out, please. I beg you.”

  They hesitate. Sarah motions for them to go.

  “And where are we supposed to wait? On the street?” Ed grumbles.

  She and Dick are alone. He comes around to her side of the desk. “Rose,” he says. He takes her hand. He offers her a butterscotch candy from his big glass candy dish. She unwraps the yellow cellophane and puts the candy into her mouth. When she tastes the butterscotch on her tongue, she starts to cry because it tastes so good. She had forgotten.

  “I don’t want the money,” she says.

  “I know,” Dick tells her. He has earnest blue eyes and a high dome of a forehead, pink and slightly freckled. “But he left it to you, you know.”

  “We left all our money to each other,” Rose says. “Isn’t that true?”

  “That’s right. That’s how we wrote it up in the will.”

  “How was I to know he had any?” Rose folds and refolds the butterscotch wrapper.

  “How could anybody know?”

  “And then where does it go?” she asks suddenly, remembering something.

  “The money? The way you’ve got it down, after you it goes to the children.”

  “The children?”

  “That’s right. Of course, you can do whatever you want.”

  “I don’t want to do anything,” she says miserably. The butterscotch is melting away on her tongue. The dent on the top is wearing down into a hole, sweeter and sweeter. “I would like to see Jerusalem; I would like to go there once. I would like to see Paris again.”

  “You could travel, sure.”

  “But I don’t have the strength for it.”

  “But in time—”

  “If I went on a boat.” The idea or wish returns to her, the thought of sailing away over the ice and into the Atlantic. She would take one cabin, and Esther would take the mirror image next door. “I could sail on ships,” she says.

  “Well, of course, you’d be spending capital.” Dick pushes around the papers on his desk. “But you only live once. The way I see it, you want to stay liquid, you want to dip in if you feel like it.”

  “But I can’t,” Rose says.

  “Why not? It’s your money; you can do anything you want.”

  “Even—write a new will?”

  “Sure you can. You can write a will anytime you want.”

  —

  “I said C.D.s, Henry said bonds,” Ed explodes in the cab.

  “We wanted you to spend the int-int-interest,” Henry says.

  “And preserve your capital so you will have something left,” Ed says. “What do you do? You invest in Fannie Mae, so you can spend the interest and the capital and have nothing left.”

  “Ed,” Sarah chides from the front seat.

  Rose is sitting in back, wedged between her sons. They are frightening her to death, waving this and that prospectus in her face. “Don’t you see, Ma,” Ed tells her. “With bonds you get your interest and then when the bond comes due you get your original investment back. You put your money into the fund that buys mortgages, you understand? You’ll get your money back as all these people pay off their mortgages, but then at the end you don’t get any lump sum—you don’t get anything. All the money is paid back as you go along. And if you spend that money that’s being paid, you won’t have any more for later. That’s it—it’s finished.”

  She is clutching her purse in her lap in the lurching cab; she is closing her eyes. Strange flashes of dreams fill her mind. There she is, strapped into the ambulance in the night, and her two husbands on either side of her, one lecturing her, terribly stern, the other whining and kvetching. She opens her eyes and sees spots; she sees her sons and her two husbands. “Stop it. Stop it, all of you!” she shouts.

  In silence they help her out of the cab. Silently they take her up the stairs. Sarah carries the purse into the bedroom for Rose. “Why don’t you take off your girdle?” she says to Rose. “Why don’t you lie down?”

  The sheets are smooth against her skin. There is no one else in the apartment. Dorothy and her jogging suits are gone; the children are gone until tomorrow.

  —

  In the night she gets up and puts on her robe and slippers. She walks through the empty apartment, turns on the lights. She begins to look at her things, to look at each one as if for the last time. She adjusts her pictures of the boys in their sailor suits. She examines her needlework, all the tiny stitches in her needlepoint birds. She holds up her photograph of Ben to the light, a picture in which he looks very stern and old. He would not approve of putting money in Fannie Mae. He would call it frivolous. She folds up Maury’s plaid lap blanket and touches his large-print library books in their clear plastic library jackets. He used to say, “What’s money for but to enjoy?” All the time he was saving a hundred here, a thousand there, in all those little bank accounts. Ben spent on the big things, the old Brooklyn house, the car, furniture, college for Ed and Henry. Maury never bought big-ticket items. As for Rose, she hates the thought of money. She has never had a head for mathematics or money. She loves beauty, and that is all.

  Then she remembers something. There is something she must do. She goes to the secretary stocked with stationery. She still has her stationery and her old address labels: “Mr. and Mrs. B. Markowitz.” She never changed her name, even after she married Maury. She had been Rose Markowitz for too long to change—and besides, Maury’s last name was Rosenberg, and Rose Rosenberg was a name she could not bear. She couldn’t bear it. She takes out her note paper, cream-colored, with a single coral rose at the top. She begins to write on it, covering the paper lightly in ballpoint. Her letters are round and large, with a great deal of space above and below. She leaves her a’s and o’s open at the top, as if they were bowls to be filled up later. Will, she writes at the top of the page.

  Thank God I am still in sound mind, although my body is weak, still grieving for the loss of my dear husband still in shock from the way he was torn from me when they were claiming to be reviving him.

  The whole of my estate if there is any left from Fannie Mae, I leave not to my children or to Maury’s daughter, Dorothy, not out of spite, but because I choose to give where there is most need. My son Edward is a renowned professor of the Middle East and although a good man is deeply absorbed in his own career and foreign affairs with little time for other matters. Within him lies a good heart, although self absorbed. With many successes and articles, he is standing on his own two feet. My son Henry is now in the art business in California. He has given up teaching for business however he has still not married. Although he breaks my heart being a bachelor, he does not do anything about it. He is living for himself only, and what way to live is that?

  If however, my son Henry does marry within five years I will give his wife all my jewelry with the exception of my garnet ring which I leave to my dear neighbor Esther Rabinowitz. If he does not marry, then to my darling daughter in law Sarah will go all the jewelry.

  As for Dorothy, I bear no malice toward her but I cannot forgive her for coming to push her own father into the grave.

  All the money and goods will go to The Girls’ Orphanage in Israel, to the fund for brides to prepare them for their weddings and their Jewish homes. I too was an orphan like them and I too know what it was like to be sent
away to a foreign land.

  The only exception is my diary, which I leave to my dear Sarah, because she is a writer. Although it is unfinished, she will know what to do with it.

  Rose has covered six small pages of her cream stationery. She is exhausted. She gets up and walks back to the bedroom. But as she gets into bed she realizes she has forgotten something. What is it? She agonizes, imagining what it can be, but she can think of nothing. Then, in the early morning, before dawn, she wakes up and glimpses the stern picture of her husband Ben staring down at her from the wall. He seems to be following her with his eyes. She hurries back to the desk. Codicil, she writes.

  I cannot forget also about Dad’s dissertation which has never received recognition. I leave this also to Sarah to translate and to publish as she sees fit because she can appreciate its scholarship. When he passed away I planned to translate it in his memory but the difficulties I encountered in my life were too great before I met Maury and afterward Maury insisted I spend my time on other things for he believed that it was better to enjoy life while living than to spend time with the dead. However, I still hoped to translate it while I had the strength, but in recent years when he became ill I found I did not. It is not Maury who is to blame for this it was simply his disposition. Despite his many other qualities he was not a scholar.

  She reads the will and codicil over to herself and sighs with relief. It is not that she feels better, but that it comforts her to write this down. Maury didn’t write down much. He never wrote letters, or even postcards. But Rose feels she must leave some description of her feelings and ideas to her children. She cannot bear the thought that she will not be remembered. As for whether they’ll approve of her will, she cannot worry about that now; it is hers to write, and they won’t know about it for years and years. She won’t say a word.

  THE ART BIZ

  In the cool, California night, Henry Markowitz is closing up Michael Spivitz Fine Art Gallery. He has to stay open until ten on Thursday nights to take in the evening crowd. The tourists tracking in sand from the beach and the open-air cappuccino bars. Henry hates the sand and the bathing suits, but, as Michael says, this is the reality of selling art in Venice. Henry has often had to resist the urge to turn these people away. At least the ones without shoes. The one thing he cannot abide is bare feet—as if this were the concession stand at the beach and not a gallery showing work by some very important twentieth-century artists. Admittedly, the artworks aren’t originals. There are Chagall prints and signed Dalí lithographs. They sell a great many lithographs, but they are all signed. It seems to Henry that there should be a modicum of respect shown to these wisps of authenticity. Sandals at the very least.

  He sweeps the parquet floor with a big push broom he keeps in the back. There is a cleaning service, but he can’t help himself. Five years ago he would not have envisioned himself sweeping a gallery in Venice Beach. His thought when he went into the art business was that he would be dealing in antiquities: cataloging, negotiating with collectors and museums in paneled rooms, and, of course, using his expertise—a Ph.D., two monographs, several articles—in early books and prints from England and France. This seemed the natural course for him while he was retooling at the Wharton School, putting a negative tenure decision and a failed grievance behind him, and, as his therapist put it, recognizing how many different life paths there really were once you opened yourself up to them. But one thing did not lead to another. Prints and manuscripts at Sotheby’s was not forthcoming. The job at Christie’s in London turned out to be only seasonal. He did have a firm offer from a friend of his brother’s, but assistant manager at the Laura Ashley in Short Hills was not for him.

  “Why not?” his brother, Edward, demanded.

  “Why not? It’s got nothing to do with art,” Henry said.

  “It’s retail,” Ed said, brutal and succinct.

  “It’s women’s ap-ap-ap-”

  “It’s a job,” Ed said.

  “Apparel!” Henry burst out.

  “So what,” Ed said, always pragmatic. “I thought you wanted to be in New York.”

  “Short Hills is not, is not, New York,” Henry cried. And he refused to discuss it further.

  The path that did open up for him was manager at Michael Spivitz. It was not New York, but it was art. And Henry has been working on bringing in some original contemporary pieces. He is working on a show for a fabulous lesser-known sculptor who works in brass, creating seed forms with uncurling stems, or sometimes miniature human figures unfolding from a central root like earthy homunculi. Henry has given up New York, uprooted his elderly mother and moved her to Venice, laid down his life learning to drive on the L.A. freeway, but he is still in the art business.

  He is just turning off the lights when he sees someone rattling the glass doors. It is a woman with a frenzied look and flyaway hair. He gestures that the gallery is closed and she gestures that she needs to talk to him, so he lets her in. As the heavy glass opens, her voice explodes into the gallery, frantic, with a heavy Israeli accent.

  “My son! My son is in trouble.”

  “Has there been an accident?” Henry asks.

  “Yes! Yes, an accident.”

  “Where is it?” Henry peers out into the dark street.

  “Not in a car. He has disappeared.”

  “I don’t understand,” says Henry.

  “You understand Hebrew?” she asks him.

  He shakes his head.

  “My name is Amalya Ben Ami,” she says. “I’m staying at Venice Sands. I came just a few weeks ago with my son from Haifa, and now he has disappeared.”

  “You’ve lost your son? Did you call the police?”

  “Yes, yes. They can do nothing. I need you to help me.”

  “I?” Henry stands there in his Indian cotton shirt and stares at the Israeli woman. She wears a good deal of jewelry and carries an enormous leather handbag. It sounds like some delusional fantasy, what she’s saying, but the strangest thing is the way she tells it to him slowly and deliberately, as if he were some kind of moron who can’t follow her.

  “The police cannot help me,” she says. “Michael Spivitz has got my son. He has my child.”

  “Michael Spivitz?” Henry asks, aghast.

  “Let me explain this to you. Your employer has got my son,” she says. “He is keeping him.”

  “That can’t be,” says Henry.

  Then she breaks down in front of him, just sobs in frustration, like a teacher who has tried to explain the simplest problem and has not gotten through at all. “He has stolen him,” she sobs, the glow of the track lighting shining on her flyaway hennaed hair.

  “That’s impossible,” says Henry. “It doesn’t make any sense at all. My employer does not steal children.”

  “It’s true,” she says. “Do you disbelieve me?”

  “But I have no idea,” Henry pleads with her. “You’re distraught, you’re—”

  She simply puts her enormous handbag on the floor and begins pulling out papers, her passport, her airline tickets, a letter on consular stationery. “This is his picture,” she says, and holds up a photo of a tanned teenager with dark eyes. “His name is Eitan Ben Ami.”

  “Look here,” says Henry, “I must get home. May I call you a cab?”

  She seems crushed at this and cries even more. “You don’t believe me.” Henry doesn’t answer. “You don’t listen to me.”

  Henry is beginning to feel nervous standing there alone with her in the gallery. “If you’ve lost him, this is a matter for the police,” he says.

  “I tell you, I’ve gone to the police,” she cries out. “They do nothing.”

  “Well,” Henry stammers, “then there’s noth-nothing to be done. Now I must close up, I must get home. Please let me call you a cab for your hotel.”

  She stands there silent for a long time. Motionless. He begins thinking he should call the police. The police are very good in this neighborhood. Prompt and courteous. “I want to talk to a
rabbi,” she says suddenly in a small voice.

  “I’ll call you a rabbi then.” Henry hurries anxiously to his desk and begins telephoning synagogues listed in the yellow pages under houses of worship. He leaves flustered messages on several answering machines. “This is Henry Markowitz. There is a woman here, Amalya Ben Ami, staying at Venice Sands, and she needs to speak to the rabbi as soon as possible. She is quite dis-dis-distressed.”

  —

  Henry’s condominium is ordinary and white, identical to all the others from the outside, but he has hung up his herbs and garlic braid in the galley kitchen, filled the second bedroom from floor to ceiling with his book collection. In the living room a Persian rug covers most of the gray wall-to-wall carpet, and the sliding glass doors are adorned with long flowing curtains and a custom-made scalloped valance in royal blue silk. His old prints cover the walls, and in a place of honor away from the light he has hung his small but real Dürer sketch of a rabbit. He takes off his clothes as soon as he gets in, puts on his silk bathrobe, and runs a hot bath. He needs to soak; he needs to close his eyes and forget the day. He pours himself a drink and takes out the leftover prime rib, beets, and potatoes au gratin to heat up. Although he lives alone, Henry cooks. He is one of those rare people capable of cooking a full meal just for himself. He spends time planning delicious and attractive meals, buys flowers for the table, even when he has no one else to entertain. Good food on good china, fine crystal, and old silver are necessities for him, essential to his existence. What is life without dinner? An afternoon without a good wine? A bed without fresh cotton? A house without flowers?

  He sinks into the bath and the water flows over him. He is a tall man, fleshy and pink, his curly hair receding, his deep-set eyes heavily shadowed from compulsive nocturnal scholarship. For Henry still keeps up with the literature in his field, and still works at writing articles—actually, one article—late at night propped up in bed. The water flows into his pores, relaxes his muscles; he feels his whole body uncoiling. Then the phone rings. He closes his eyes. He called her from the gallery hours ago, but she is calling anyway. The phone rings eleven times. He gets up with the water streaming off him, wraps a towel around his waist. “Hello, Mother,” he says.