7
WHEN I CAME into the kitchen the next morning Abe was already there, sitting at the table, my mother’s hand on top of his, the two of them laughing together so easily and happily that I wanted, at first, to disappear. A copy of The Brooklyn Eagle lay next to the toaster, open to the sports section.
“Sorry about the game,” Abe said.
My mother kissed me, touched my lower lip with her finger.
“Did somebody hit you there? Your lips look all bruised—”
“I heard that during the game people made some nasty remarks,” Abe said. “You shouldn’t listen to other people. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
I sat. My mother put a glass of orange juice in front of me. Abe wore the same double-breasted gray pinstripe suit he’d worn to my father’s funeral.
“I thought it might be good for you to get away from things for a day,” he said. “I have to get out of town and I stopped by to see if you wanted to come along.”
“Sure.”
“It’ll be nice,” my mother said. “My two favorite men going off by themselves together.”
“You don’t mind being left alone?”
She kissed me, said something to Abe about how thoughtful and sweet I was, then went back to the stove to make me bacon and eggs, to fry my toast in the bacon grease, the way I liked. The phone rang. My mother answered, raised her eyebrows, said it was for me.
“It’s a girl.”
My heart bounced.
“Davey?”
“Yes.”
“This is Regina. I’m sorry to call you like this and I hope it don’t make trouble, but Tony was afraid to call himself, in case the wrong person answered. He asked me to call you and find out if you’re okay, after yesterday.”
“I’m okay. What do you want?”
“Just to give you Tony’s message. He said if you’d like to get together, just the two of you—away from everybody—that I should arrange things, for where you two could meet.”
“Forget it. I’m going with my uncle today.”
“All right. I’ll tell him. And Davey?”
“Yes?”
“As long as I got you on the phone I wanted to tell you, for myself, that I’m real sorry about your father. I know how it feels, with my mother dying last year and my father sick a lot with his lungs. I mean, I’m sorry.”
“Sure.”
“Also that I’m glad you keep telling Tony he should go to college someday. I tell him the same thing all the time and he tells me I’m crazy. But he listens to you, I think.”
“Sure.”
“I get the feeling you can’t talk. Your uncle must be there.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Davey. I really am. About the game and your father and things. Don’t hold things against Tony, though, okay? I mean, he tries as hard as he can. I think he’d like to be your friend still, no matter what.”
“Sure,” I said, and hung up.
My mother rolled her eyes. I was wary, tight. I tried not to think of Gail. I tried not to remember how I’d felt the night before. What good would that do me now? My mother liked to joke about how the girls were all after me but that I was their silent one too, she supposed. Abe said nothing. Could he guess that the call was from Tony? Would he grill me about it later on? Abe and Fasalino had been at peace for years, but none of us believed it would last forever. The only thing Fasalino understands is motion, Abe had said. He thinks motion is progress. When his organization stops moving he thinks it’s dying. My mother caressed my cheek with the back of her hand, said that it would do all of us good for me to be away for a day, that she had been saying to Abe that what she wanted most of all, after the last few days, was just to be left alone.
“Sometimes I dream about getting away all by myself,” she said, setting down my bacon and eggs and toast. “Do you know what I mean? I dream about going to some faraway place—not California, I gave up on that a long time back—but just somewhere where the sun shines all the time and it’s like I still got my whole life ahead of me.”
“It can be arranged,” Abe said.
“Do you think your mother’s crazy to have a dream like that?”
“No.”
“If we don’t have dreams, then what do we got?”
“I told you before, Evie, I’d like to treat you and Davey to a real vacation if you’d let me. You deserve it.”
“Nah.” She waved his offer away. “I know you mean well, but what I’m talking about ain’t some hotel in Miami or Havana. What I want is to be like on a beautiful ocean liner where nobody knows you and nobody knows nothing about you and everything in your life is brand new—that it can all still happen. Where nobody can phone you or send you letters or be ringing your doorbell.” She touched my hand. “Your father, with his brain, he used to talk about these giant ships that would go back and forth across the ocean someday, that would take maybe ten or twenty thousand people at a time, and I don’t mean rich people or poor people or immigrants but just plain people like us. He talked about how there would be these enormous cafeterias and giant movie theaters and lots of classrooms—they could let schoolteachers go for free, see, if they gave classes for an hour a day—and sleeping rooms like dormitories in colleges. He worked out all the arithmetic, about how big the ship would have to be and how many people they’d have to carry and how many years it would take for the companies to make a profit. I kept telling him to write it down in a letter to one of the big shipping outfits. He had a terrific brain when he wanted to, your father.”
“I thought I’d take Davey to meet Mr. Rothenberg,” Abe stated. “It’s where I’m going today.”
“No!”
My mother stood, backed up against the refrigerator, hands crossed at her throat, pulling her robe tight.
“Mr. Rothenberg sends his condolences and asked if he could meet Sol’s son, if he could meet Momma’s grandson.”
“No, Abe. Please! We should leave the children out of these things. I mean, did they ask to be born?”
“No, Evie. But they were, and if you’re born into this world, like it or not, there seems to be an admission price.”
“Listen, Davey.” My mother turned to me. Her voice was soft and sweet, but her eyes were large and crazy. “Just make believe Abe never said nothing, okay? Listen to your mother for once, because this is the way it all starts, see? Listen to your mother. Maybe there’s an admission price. Sure. But if you pay once, why should you keep paying your whole life long?”
“Mr. Rothenberg is an old man.”
“Oh he ain’t a bad man, Davey,” my mother said, taking my hands in hers. “I ain’t saying that. Nobody was good to us like he was good to us once upon a time, only don’t get started, all right? Stay home with Momma today. You stay with Momma and keep the neighbors away—tell them I got one of my migraines so we can be alone here together, just the two of us. Please, darling?”
“You’re still upset because of Sol,” Abe said. “The boy said he wants to come with me. Right, Davey?”
“Yes.”
My mother drew back from me. “Sure,” she said. “Sure. Only I’ll tell you something else I’ve been thinking about that I didn’t want to say, but maybe with the phone call he got before, maybe it’s time I said what’s on my mind, because do you know who I pity most of all? I pity any girl who gets stuck on him, that’s who. You know what this one will do if he ever catches her with another guy. He’ll kill her.”
“You’re talking crazy,” Abe said. “Stop.”
“Sure. Go off with your uncle and let Mr. Rothenberg suck you in the same way he did Abe, and when you got money spilling from your pockets and a bunch of floozies reaching in with their dirty hands—”
“I said to stop.”
“Who’s gonna make me, huh? You, big shot? Or one of your goons? So why shouldn’t the boy get started with the killing and the rest of it? The truth is that all you were waiting for was till Sol was gone. Di
dn’t I know it? Didn’t I know all along you’d start up with Davey even more once Sol was out of the way?”
Abe grabbed her wrist. She pulled away. “Only what am I made of, after all these years—stone? What do you want from me, Abe, huh? What do you want from my life? Can you answer me that?”
“I want you to be happy.”
She laughed. “Tell me another one. Sure. Tell me another one.” She walked in circles, from the window to the sink, from the sink to the window. “Am I made of stone or am I made of stone? First they take away Momma and now they take away Sol and in between Poppa’s dead for you and you’re dead for him and for twenty years guess who’s in the middle? Little Evie. So how do you think I felt the whole war, waiting every day for a telegram from the President telling me they took you away too and I could put my star in the window if I wanted to….”
I imagined Gail entering our apartment, watching my mother. Would she laugh? Would she cry? Would she embrace my mother? What would she feel towards me? I thought of calling Regina, of apologizing to her for how severe I’d been.
“So if the telegram didn’t come, maybe the phone call will, right? When the phone rings, do I know if it’s the police or if it’s one of your goons so he can tell me you got caught in a bad accident like Spanish Louie or Avie? Ha! You think I don’t know all about that, that everyone in the neighborhood don’t know. Sure. I know where it all begins, Abe—only where does it end, can you answer me that? Where does it end?”
She put the telephone receiver to her ear.
“Hello?… Yes, this is Eva Voloshin…. What? You got news for me about my big-shot brother Abe Litvinov, but you need somebody to identify the body down at the morgue?… Listen, as soon as I put on some makeup I’ll be there, only as long as I got you on the line, maybe you can tell me how many years you think I got left with my son Davey…?”
Abe took the phone from her hand, put it back in its cradle.
“You made your point, Evie. Now cut it out.”
“Why? I didn’t cry enough already?”
“You cried enough,” I said.
“Wise guy. Now we’ll get our two cents from the peanut gallery, yeah? On how I did the wrong thing after his father died, that I didn’t cry with him. You think I don’t know you hold a grudge against me for that? You think I don’t know how you can’t wait to get out of this house—with Abe today, and then in another year it’ll be thanks a lot, Momma, but goodbye and good luck and I’m off to college. And in between if some nice little tramp should come along and open her fuzzy little purse for you—”
“Leave the boy alone.”
“What’s the matter, he can’t fight his own battles?”
Abe grabbed her by the chin, forced her to look at him.
“When we needed help, Mr. Rothenberg was the only one, and don’t you forget it. Don’t forget what they would have done to Momma if not for him. You remember that and then you think twice before you open your mouth to the boy.”
“Whatever you say.” She glanced at me. “Whatever he wants.” She pushed him away. “You want to be with your uncle, darling? You go with your uncle. You want to get killed now when you’re young? You go get killed now. It will save us grief later. You want to know if I care anymore, if I’ll be here after you’re both gone, you send me a telegram, yeah? You want me not to open my mouth no more, I won’t open my mouth.”
She left the kitchen.
“Was she always like this?” I asked a few seconds later. “I mean, when you were growing up together, was she like this then?”
“No.”
I heard her grunting, behind me. I turned. She stood in the doorway, the bottom half of her face covered with adhesive tape. Abe tried to laugh. My mother went to the phone, wrote a message on the note pad: “I CAN’T OPEN MY MOUTH, NOW ARE YOU HAPPY?”
Abe stood up and I was scared for a second that he was going to tear the tape from her face, but instead he just put his arm around her and kissed her cheek, told her that she’d made her point, that she could say anything she wanted to us, that we both loved her. She cocked her head to the side. Did she know how much he loved her, that he still loved her like nobody else did, like when they were kids?
We were on the highway outside the city, heading upstate, before I remembered that I’d forgotten to telephone Gail. I tried to imagine the inside of her house—carpeted rooms, expensive furniture, bookcases, porcelain vases, thick draperies, painting and prints on the walls—and Gail walking around, getting ready for school, eating breakfast, watching the phone. Why hadn’t I kept my promise? I imagined us in the rain, her hair rubbing against my chin. We kissed. I told her how sorry I was that I’d forgotten to call. She smiled. Was it really possible that two people could make one another so happy, so soon, merely by being together, by touching?
“Will we be back late tonight?”
“Why? Got a date?”
“No. Not really.”
“Got a girl?”
“Sort of. I don’t know. How could you tell? I mean, the call wasn’t from her this morning.”
“I know.”
“I met somebody I like, though. That’s true.”
“Is she worthy of you?”
“Is she what?”
We laughed. I looked out the window, at trees, houses, barns, and I felt easy suddenly, as if I could ask him all the questions I’d always wanted to ask him, as if—it had been the same with Gail the night before—there was nothing that two people who liked each other could not say to one another.
“Did you have a girlfriend when you were my age?”
“Me? Sure. I always liked the women, Davey.”
“With your hat down that way, you look like Robert Taylor a little bit, except that your mouth is larger.” I stopped. I thought of the picture I’d drawn of him and wondered if he still had it. His lips were full the way Gail’s were. Could I draw her picture and give it to her for her birthday? Would I be able to do her portrait from memory? “Why did you marry aunt Lillian? Can I ask that?”
“Sure.” He laughed. “That’s an easy one, Davey, because the short answer is that when I was young I was what your mother said you’re going to be: a sucker for women.” He touched his hair. “Sure. I liked skirts, and in my business that was a liability. The way I looked at it was this, see: you have a choice with women—you can get to know what they’re all like by knowing lots of them a little bit, or by knowing one of them well. Does that answer your question?”
“But you don’t love Lillian, do you?”
“No.”
“Did you ever love her. I mean the way—”
“—the way your father loved your mother, for example? I doubt it. It’s too far back to remember. Lillian is good for me, though. She protects me. By sticking with her and getting to know her well, life is safer. She enabled me to develop a distaste for other women. She cured me.”
“But that’s terrible.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It just seems a waste—somebody like you not to have somebody to love, to love you back your whole life.”
“Love isn’t everything. I had enough to last me a few more years.” He reached over, touched my hair. “You’re a sweet kid, Davey. A real romantic. Your mother would be happy if she could hear you talking like this.” He nodded. “But I’m glad you have a girlfriend. It’s good to have somebody at your age, somebody you can stick it into when you get the urge.”
“It’s not like that.”
“It never is at first.”
We were quiet. Was he being this way on purpose, trying to protect me by making me hate him?
“You said that just to hurt me, didn’t you?” I moved closer to him. He turned his Army ring so that sunlight bounced off the red stone. “Why is it you have to get so cold and mean sometimes? My mother says it’s not your fault, that you weren’t always this way, that you had no choice.”
“Not true,” he said quickly. “We always have choices.” He licked his lip
s, waited, and when he spoke again it was as if he’d said the same words to himself, over and over, a thousand times: “The rich have more choices than the poor, and the strong have more choices than the weak, and the powerful have more choices than those without power. But we all have choices. Always.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “I didn’t choose to have you for an uncle.”
To my surprise Abe showed no anger. Instead he smiled, reached across, ruffled my hair. We turned off the highway onto a two-lane road.
“You’re a smart boy, Davey. Sure. They’ll try to visit the sins of the uncles on the nephews, right? For a while—a year maybe—the scouts won’t come sniffing at your door, but don’t worry about it. One way or the other, you’ll have your chance.”
“How?”
“When things blow over. When the investigations end without them pinning anything on me or Mr. Rothenberg. We’re clean, Davey. We have better things to do with our time than hang around locker rooms.”
Could I believe him? Did I want to believe him? He tipped his hat back, touched his left jacket pocket with his right hand, as if to feel for a gun. But there was no gun there, I knew. He seemed very happy, and I wondered for an instant if this wasn’t so because he was already thinking about the strings he could pull in order to get me into college—because he was already imagining talking with Mr. Rothenberg about me and what deals they could make to fix things.
“We’ll be at Mr. Rothenberg’s in about twenty-five minutes. You’ll like his house.”
“Do you mind my asking questions?”
“You have more?”
“Lots.”
“Such as—?”
“What things were like when you and my mother were kids. What you feel about the colleges not talking to me because of you—because of the scandals. Why you always turn your ring around on your finger when you get upset. Why you won’t speak to your father. Why he hates you the way you hate him. What Mr. Rothenberg did for you and Mom. What he stopped people from doing to your mother…”
In my head, Gail was smiling at me, encouraging me to go on, telling me that life was too short not to say the things we wanted to the people we cared about. I gazed out the window. In front of a small run-down gas station a young boy, sitting in a wheelbarrow, waved to me.
Before My Life Began Page 21
