The Rich Man's Table

by Scott Spencer

  This was the world in which Esther was raised, a world she still revered when Luke came into her life. Luke was fascinated by it—to Dad, Communism was like Rosicrucianism, or membership in a Masonic lodge, a secret society, full of its own language and rituals and hand signals. It appealed to him on so many levels: it was despised, it was dangerous, it proposed an upside-down future. It was predictive, like astrology; it was as American as a tall tale. It embraced the blacks. In those early days with Esther, Luke was an eager student. The Scottsboro boys, the novels of Richard Wright, the passion of Paul Robeson: it all held such appeal for him. But his avid attention, his enthusiasm did create a misunderstanding. Those old Reds didn’t realize that the voracious appetite Luke brought to their songs and legends was the appetite he brought to everything that was new. He was restless, his attention was easily distracted; his idealism was rather delicate, easily crushed. And when other influences came into Luke’s life—drugs, film, the Top Forty, motorcycles, Zen—my grandparents (and, I suppose, Esther as well) scoffed at him, treated him as if he were a dilettante, a child, and Luke, in turn, responded to the withdrawal of the initial approval with a kind of violence that took the form of ridicule and scorn—as if Hegel, Marx, and peace in Vietnam were suddenly irritating and old-hat. They were no longer ideas but impediments that the old bunch were throwing in his path, things he had to kick out of the way as he went for whatever it was he wanted next.

  “I know it seems meshuga now,” Grandpa said, last time I visited him at the Shoreview Home, “but we were so excited to have Luke learning our songs. It wasn’t just the coffee houses with the beatniks, you know that, don’t you? He was playing and singing progressive songs about the injustices in life, in front of thousands of people. They weren’t just concerts anymore, they were mass rallies. With good songs and a feeling among the young people that they could really change the world. They looked up to Luke. He could have changed the world. He could have done something. Something huge, like no other singer has ever done. It was in his grasp. And he let it go. That Steinberg came waltzing into his life, with the rings on his fat fingers and the smug little grin like he just cornered the herring market, and he told Luke, ‘Hey, why are you wasting your time with these people? You should be making gold records.’ And Luke, goddamn him, he listened. Oh boy, did he listen. Peace wasn’t so sexy anymore, it wasn’t interesting, it wasn’t spangly and sparkly, and the same with sit-ins, and economic justice. The sonofabitch was more interested in singing about his pot dreams. I could wring his neck, with his ‘obsidian umbrellas in a church with no name.’ What kind of pud- pulling reactionary bullshit is that? He didn’t just leave your mother, the sonofabitch, he left all of us. He left decency. The little punk signed on with Steinberg and joined the capitalist class! And then what does he do? Use his influence and his talent to get that no-goodnik murderer Sergei Karpanov out of jail!”

  At last I heard footsteps on the other end of the line, and then Grandpa’s voice, full of vigor and annoyance.

  “What’s going on?” he said. “Where are you calling from?”

  “What did they tell you, Grandpa?”

  “They tell me to eat my carrots and drink my juice. Now you tell me. What’s going on?”

  “Mom was in an accident. She’s in the hospital.”

  There was a long and awful silence, that kind of emptiness that gives us a glimpse of death. And when Irv finally spoke, his voice was like a spray of gravel.

  “Is she all right?”

  “Yes. She’s all right.”

  “I want to talk to her.”

  “She can’t talk right now, Grandpa.” I let that sink in. “She’s in a coma. The doctors—”

  “Yeah, yeah, the doctors.” I pictured him as he was the last time we were together. When I came to the home he was in his room, eating his lunch off a tray, in bed. He was wearing a light green hospital gown; his long legs were skinny and hairless and his toenails had grown monstrously long. Yet he was strong. His embrace was powerful, and he kissed me so hard on the cheek my jaw ached.

  We talked on the phone for a few more minutes. I gave him an honest report of what had happened, the shape she was in, inasmuch as I could. And I told him where exactly we were, the address, the phone number.

  “I’m coming,” he said, finally. “I’ll hire a car. Tell her I’ll be there in four hours, maybe five, maybe six. But I’ll be there. Just say it right in her ear, never mind the coma. Often they hear. Often.”

  “I will.”

  “Keep checking on those doctors. Those goddamned country doctors.”

  “I will.”

  “The things that can go on in those places. Someone can put the wrong tube in her, or give her a pill that was supposed to be for someone else. You don’t know.”

  “I’ll stay here.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “At the hospital.”

  “In her room?”

  “No. In the hall. She’s sleeping, I didn’t want to call from there.”

  “Okay. I accept that. But keep an eye on things. I charge you with this responsibility.”

  “I can’t stay there all the time.”

  “Billy. I’m not asking you for that. I asked you for a nickel, not a thousand dollars. She’s all I got. And you. Everything else is over. Even history.”

  “She’s going to be all right, Grandpa.”

  “I had to watch the death of socialism. Okay? And I did it. I had to watch the death of my beloved wife. And I did that, too. But I will not be alive for the death of my child. I draw the line there.”

  “She’s going to be all right, Grandpa.”

  “And Billy? Don’t tell him. Okay?”

  “Don’t tell who?” I said. It was a loony question. Of course I knew. Grandpa spared me the answer by hanging up.

  THE LAST time my grandfather and Luke had seen each other was the day Sergei Karpanov got out on bail. Grandpa put the blame squarely on Luke and called him as soon as the news broke. Luke’s phones had been going all day, but he hadn’t picked up once. Grandpa, however, called in on Luke’s private line in New York; Luke had given the number to my mother, years ago, telling her that if she ever needed to reach him, day or night, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, the call would be forwarded to wherever he was. (I assume there were others who had this secret number, but in my researches I’ve come up with only one other person who had the power to make that little white phone in Luke’s bedroom ring, and that was a woman disc jockey in Tampa named Holly Whitehurst, with whom Luke spent a little less than eight hours and to whom he gave the secret number on a despairing sort of whim.)

  “Is that you?” said Grandpa to Luke. It was about ten at night. Irv was in the kitchen. The only light was from a sputtering fluorescent over the sink. He was in his brown slacks, an old green cardigan—old-fart clothes, he called them. His fine white hair was wild from the electricity generated by his running his fingers through it over and over.

  “Irv?” Though Luke hadn’t heard Grandpa’s voice in years, he had a perfect recording memory for sound.

  “I want to talk to you. Face to face.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now.”

  “It’s kind of late, Irv. I’m in bed.”

  Luke had just worked out, taken some steam, a sauna, poured some of Sergei’s vodka into his tall glass of cranberry juice.

  “I’ll be over in twenty minutes. It’s important.”

  “Irv. I was really sorry to hear about Lillian. I wanted to call you. Did you get my letter?”

  “No.”

  “I liked her very much, Irv. Lillian was—”

  “And what if she didn’t like you?”

  “I’ll have to live with that.”

  “So? It’s all right? I can come over?”

  “You’re an old man, Irv. You can’t go running around in the middle of the night.”

  “Okay. Then you come here.”

  There was a long pause. Grandpa
figured if Luke was giving it this much thought, then he had him.

  “All right,” Luke finally said. “Give me an hour.”

  “I don’t have an hour. Gome right now.”

  “Irv. I’m doing you a favor.”

  “Come right now!”

  Luke’s driver, Carmine Manzardo, lived just a few blocks away, on Crosby Street, and Luke’s car was garaged on Houston. They were set to go in fifteen minutes. Over the Brooklyn Bridge. The neon from the Watchtower Building reflected in the East River, backward mirror writing; a mysterious-looking ship with a flag Luke could not recognize was being loaded under floodlights in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

  “Everything okay?” Carmine asked.

  “Just drive, Carmine.” Luke stared out the window. A lit cigarette furled its lilac plume around his fingers.

  They drove through slipping-down neighborhoods. Large limestone houses long ago divided into cramped apartments. Shopping streets with most of the stores closed forever. A streetlight shining down on emptiness, circles of stark, shining emptiness leading them deeper and deeper into Brooklyn.

  “If I’m not out in fifteen minutes,” Luke said, getting out of the car, looking at Grandpa’s virtuous old house, “come in and get me. Say I’m late for something and we gotta go.”

  There was a fence, a gate, a little swatch of lawn, like a sample from the yard store. The streetlight reflected in the dark, curtained window. Luke had never been here at night; this was a house of afternoons, sitting in the parlor with Esther, shooting the breeze with the Rothschilds and their Commie friends, looking at Esther, letting her know with his eyes it was time to go, to a party, to make love. Leaving, as often as not, with an armful of food and another armful of pamphlets—Negroes, Cuba, peace. (See “Burning the Pamphlets of Yesteryear,” recorded 1989.)

  Luke knocked at the door. The house was dark, and after a few moments’ silence he wondered if the old man had fallen to sleep in the time it had taken Luke to get to Brooklyn. But just then, the porch light went on—amber, its etched glass casing a sarcophagus for fatally ardent moths—and Irv was standing there, dressed in a blue suit, an unbuttoned white shirt, leaning on his wooden cane. It was almost as thick as a baseball bat, and its rubber tip was the salmon color of a brand-new eraser.

  Without a word, Grandpa opened the door to Luke and gestured him in. Luke turned and signaled Carmine, a touch to the forehead.

  Carmine felt confused. What did that mean? Everything’s okay? Or Come and get me?

  Irv turned on lamps and he led Luke into the parlor. He indicated with a sweep of the arm that Luke should sit in an oyster-colored easy chair, next to a fancy little end table, piled high with unread newspapers, still rolled tightly and bound by the paperboy’s rubber bands. Grandpa had yet to say a word, not even hello. His breath was noisy. His cane thumped heavily on the fading carpet.

  Luke sat, glanced at his watch—Sergei’s actually, a Bulova, which the Russian thought was fancy because he had heard of it, seen ads.

  “Do you listen to the news very much, Luke?” Grandpa said, standing near Luke, looming over him.

  “Hello, Irv.”

  Grandpa nodded, waited.

  “I like to know what’s going on,” Luke finally answered. “Why?”

  “Listen today.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tonight, I mean.” Grandpa leaned on his cane. Used his free hand to pat his chest hair. It was slick with sweat.

  Luke shook his head no.

  “All-news radio? Ten-ten on the dial?”

  “I don’t think so, Irv. No.”

  “Well, I do. And you know what I learned? They decided not to extradite your murdering friend back to the Soviet Union. He’ll stand trial here. In fact, he’s out on bail. Orders direct from the State Department.”

  “So be it.”

  “Yes. So be it. But such a lot of money, for the bail. They’re talking half a million. I wonder how the weightlifter had so much money at his disposal.” Irv pointed his cane at Luke and then brought it down again with a thud. “You must be proud of yourself, Luke.”

  “For what?”

  “Oh please. Your modesty stinks of cowardice.” That last word hissed out of him. Grandpa’s hands were starting to tremble. He took a deep breath to bring himself under control.

  There was a gentle pat-pat-pat across the carpet. Ditmas, a fat, one-eyed calico cat Lillian took in shortly before her own death. Irv had objected to the cat moving in, but now he doted on it. She rubbed against Grandpa’s legs and then leapt into Luke’s lap. Luke scratched her behind the ears, until Grandpa shooed her off with a poke of the cane.

  The cat disappeared into the cabbagy darkness of the house.

  “Did you know Katarina Karpanov?” Grandpa asked.

  “Look, Irv. I came here in the middle of the night, for old times—sake. But I didn’t come here to answer your questions, or for you to try and twist whatever I say into some grand scheme of yours. I didn’t have to come here, all right? I’ve got a million people tugging at my sleeve and I’m pretty good at not paying attention.”

  “It’s a very simple question, Luke. Did you know her? Did you know Katarina Karpanov?”

  “No, Irv. I didn—t. Did you?”

  “She was in this house. A beautiful woman. Selfless. A doctor like you dreamed of being, on your first day of medical school. Yes. I knew her.”

  “And do you know Sergei?”

  “I would never want to. Never.”

  “Well, there it is. You in a nutshell. Good guys and bad guys. It’s because you were raised in the city, man. You never got to play cowboys and Indians, never got to get it out of your system.”

  “So now you’re a psychoanalyst. Added on to your other wonderful talents: fiancé, father, comrade, and now a head- shrinker. But of course none of this, none of these great talents, matches your gift for creating a tidal wave of public support for a man who cold-bloodedly murdered one of the finest young women I have ever met.”

  “He didn’t murder her.”

  “Oh yes he did. Yes. And you will not pretend to know what you cannot know. Have you done an investigation? Have you studied the police reports?”

  “Have you?”

  “You, with your fancy lawyers. Of course, you bend the law whichever way you please. Make it a pretzel. Make it a bow. Put the bow in your hair and dance naked under the moon, you piece of shit.”

  “Irv,” said Luke, getting up.

  But Grandpa pushed him down into the chair, using the tip of his cane.

  “Do you hate progressive people so much that you would do this?”

  “Who are these progressive people, Irv? I’d like to meet them.”

  “You have met them. Here. In this house. What is my daughter to you—a reactionary? What am I? You came here, you ate our food, we taught you everything. What were you before? A little nobody from nowhere, smelling of the subway, with scum on your teeth. And you were such an eager student. You have that gift, you must know that. This gift, this terrible, corrupt gift to become anything you choose. You’re a chameleon, and just as cold-blooded. Katarina’s blood, soaked into the carpet, hours later, was warmer than your blood is right now.”

  “Irv, you’ve lost your fucking mind,” Luke said. He glanced at his watch and made another move to stand up. He didn’t even want to make eye contact with Grandpa; he was probably afraid of what he would see, afraid of making Irv even angrier. But something caught his attention, a shadow.

  Grandpa had raised his cane high over his head, holding on to it with both hands, as if it were one of those wooden mallets you use to ring the bell at a carnival. He brought it down fast and hard; it hit Luke in the shoulder, and it hurt.

  Instinctively, Luke grabbed for the cane, but Grandpa wrested it free. He brandished it, clearly intending to use it again.

  Luke rubbed his shoulder, keeping an eye on Irv. He got up slowly, his hands now fists.

  For a wiseguy, a man who had insulte
d so many people, and spent so much time on the road, Luke had had very little experience fighting. He was pretty much of a mouth guy. And since his early twenties, there was always someone around to stop the fights or fight them for him. Fatherless himself for most of his life, he hadn’t had those boyish sparring matches with Daddy, hadn’t closed his eyes and unleashed pinwheels of punches, only to be corrected, shown the proper form: defend with the left, attack with the right, keep your hands up, keep your eyes open.

  Not that he couldn’t have taken a seventy-five-year-old retired doctor. Pound for pound, the smart money would have been on Luke. But Grandpa struck first, and Luke was slow to react—when you’ve had a rough-and-tumble life, those first punches come quickly, but if you haven—t, then you waste time wondering if It’s really come to this, or if there’s just been some stupid misunderstanding.

  “You bastard—you bastard!” Irv shouted, and he hit Luke again with the cane, on the side of the head, and then once more, in the chest.

  Luke dropped to one knee, covering his head. He looked at his hand. Red.

  The old man cracked a river

  In the middle of my head

  I was the reddest man alive

  Now that Stalin is dead…

  —“Over the Bridge,”

  recorded 1989

  Luke grabbed for Grandpa’s legs, missed, and then slumped onto the floor. There was knocking at the door. Grandpa stood there, paralyzed with confusion. Who could be calling at this hour? The police? Was Luke so wired into the police that they knew he was in trouble? The knocking continued. Grandpa looked down at Luke. Luke was getting up again, or trying to. He was on his knees, his head hung down and his tongue lolled out, as if he were playing at being a dog.