by Evergreen
"I know," Maury said. "And you can rely on me absolutely. I want you to know that."
"If-1 didn't know that I wouldn't talk to you in the first place. I size men up in two seconds flat. What are you going to tell your wife?"
"That I collect rents. She wouldn't understand."
"I figured as much. High-class, is she?"
"Sort of."
"Yeah, well. Call me tomorrow then. At ten-thirty. No earlier. No later. And here's a twenty for expenses in the meantime. Wait, here's another. Buy yourself a pair of shoes."
"I don't need twenty for shoes. I can get a pair for six dollars."
"Twenty. I don't like cheap shoes."
There was an autumn chill in the air and Maury brought the baby in. He pulled the perambulator up the steps and parked it in the hall by the stairs; the Andreapoulises were nice about things like that. Anyway it was a kind of ornament, that carriage. It was the finest English pram, navy blue leather and chrome, the kind you saw on Park Avenue pushed by a nursemaid in a dark blue coat and veil. They'd sent it from the office when Eric was born. No doubt that meant Wolf Harris had ordered it, the way he did everything, so lavishly, so meticulously: funeral flowers and a basket of fruit when Scorzio's mother died; presents for weddings and First Communions and Bar Mitzvahs. He had an astounding memory.
Maury lifted the sleeping baby. The warm, fragrant head flopped on his shoulder. He carried him upstairs and laid him, still asleep, in his crib. He looked at his watch. A half hour before the next bottle. He slipped a finger under the diaper. Wet. Well, better not to disturb his sleep for that; he'd only be wet again in another fifteen minutes. He smiled, feeling expert and competent. On afternoons when he came home early, and they were frequent because his hours were so easy, he was glad to let Aggie go out. This whole summer in the months since Eric's birth he'd sat with a book on the front step while Eric slept. Some of the women in the neighbor-
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hood, especially the foreign-born, nudged each other as they passed. They thought it was funny for a man to be doing that. To hell with them.
Aggie would be home soon. He'd given her a nice check with which to go out and buy clothes. She had already bought a suit the color of cranberries, and looked delightful in it, as slender as she had been before the baby. There was nothing like it, the feeling a man had when he commanded: Go out and buy yourself something, buy what you want. A man felt like, he felt like—a man!
They'd given him a raise. He was making ninety dollars now plus the expenses of the car.
"Get a black coupe," Wolf Harris had instructed him that first morning. "Keep it inconspicuous. Be careful not to get a ticket, no parking tickets, nothing. And when you're out, watch through the rear-view mirror. Keep your eyes on it all the time. If you have any idea you're being followed, drive slowly, don't arouse any suspicion. Stop at the first bar you see, and get out slowly; go into the men's room and empty your pockets into the toilet. Then when you come out, slowly, you understand, go on up to the bar and have a beer, like any guy minding his own business, and then out to the car again, clean. Everything clear?"
Quite clear. He'd bought a black Graham-Paige and had no trouble so far. It was nice; they'd even taken the baby out to Jones Beach in the car. He didn't feel like a conspirator. He didn't even feel he was doing anything really wrong even though it was against the law; that part he hated. But as for the actual thing itself, it didn't seem so terrible. They weren't hurting anybody. It was the law that made it evil.
They had the 'offices' in various apartment houses, which were changed every few months; they were now on the second one since he had started working. They kept their books and took their calls in the kitchen of a very modest apartment. The woman looked even younger than Aggie, if possible. She had two babies. It all seemed so innocent, sitting there tallying the books, while the little girls had their lunch!
And the men he worked with were no more criminal types than Maury was. Scorzio, with his 'dese' and 'dose,' and Feldman, too, were just like the men who had worked in the shoe store, family men like them except that these weren't worried sick about money. These sent their children to summer camp and talked about then-piano lessons. Windy, called that for somewhat indelicate reasons,
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although tough in manner, was so decent, so generous. The day Maury had had the flu he'd driven him home and couldn't have been more considerate. Bruchman the accountant, there was a brain! Quick as an adding machine; if it hadn't been for the Depression he wouldn't be doing what he was doing, that's sure. Tom Spalding, the detective who stopped by every week for his hundred—there was a nice open face, looked like Thomas Jefferson. No harm in him, except the need of money. He had four children, one in dental school; how could he have managed otherwise? Talk about money! The amount that went through their hands was staggering. And this was only one small group. Total it all up and you had a few million dollars a week! And this was only one of Harris' enterprises, not even the main one. They said he was gradually relinquishing this to other hands; he didn't need it anymore. Since repeal he'd gone legitimate. He owned distilleries in Canada, a network of liquor-importing firms here and with all that cash had branched out into choice real estate all over the country. Fascinating, a study in itself, the ramifications, both financial and human, of all this. The man behind it, a bigger boss than Harris, Scorzio confided one day in whispered awe, was actually Jim Lan-ahan, father of the Senator. He and Harris had made theirs during Prohibition, and now Lanahan was worth tens of millions. Harris was nothing by comparison; he only counted his in millions, Scorzio said, grinning.
"But Harris is a prince, never forget that. He likes you, he does for you. Nothing is too much."
Maury wanted to know whether they ever saw Harris. He himself hadn't seen him since the day he was hired.
"Only about once a year. Around Christmas, he gives a party. Has a place way out on the Island, big place with a stone wall around it like Central Park. You'll be invited next time."
Naturally Aggie wanted to know whom he worked for and what he did. Collect rents for a big real estate outfit, he said, and then, not wanting to lie entirely, feeling somehow cleaner if there were some truth in his story, gave the name of Wolf Harris, which meant nothing to her, of course. From time to time he mentioned the names of some of the men in the office, names which also could mean nothing to her.
She pressed him to make some friends for them where he worked. "I don't see why you can't invite some of the men and their wives one evening," she insisted. "We don't see a soul except
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George and Elena, and there's no way of making friends in this neighborhood. We've no other contacts possible except your office."
"They're not your type," he said lamely.
"Can't I meet them and judge for myself? At least I could talk to the women about their babies, couldn't I?"
Of course she was dissatisfied. It was unrealistic of him to think that the baby could be enough. A woman needed more than that, especially a woman with all the life that was in Aggie, the life that had drawn him to her the first time he had seen her. What they needed, he knew, was to belong somewhere, to be a part of something, to have roots. He hadn't used that word for a long time, not since he had seen the rootedness of Aggie's home town and envied it. A place where you walked down the street and people knew your name! Friends telephoning and coming to the door! Well, someday, surely: it was what he aimed for. He grieved over the pain she must feel at her loss of it. Her mother's letter hadn't helped, either. Son of a bitch!
Apparently Aggie had written to her parents when Eric was born, although she hadn't told him. But, going through bills on the desk, he had seen the answering letter and read it through. "You and your little boy are welcome"—or something like that. "But your father will not receive your husband. I myself would reconsider, but I can't press the issue with Dad in his state of health. His heart is absolutely broken, he looks like a sick man. Everything he stood for i
s gone, his only child is gone." And then something about how nothing was forever and if a mistake had been made it was better to correct it than to live with it, so if Aggie should ever change her mind about what she had done— And then the conclusion: "Be assured again that we love you still, and you may come home with the baby and be so welcome."
He was outraged. "Be assured-!"
"Excuse me," he'd told Agatha, "for reading the letter. It wasn't honorable, but I couldn't help it."
"I don't mind," she'd said. "I would have told you anyway," and had begun to cry. If he had had her stupid mother and bastard father there in the room he would have killed them in cold blood.
The baby stirred and broke into a cry, a bleat like a lamb's. Little soul! Round mouth open, hits himself in the face with his own fist, slams his heels against the sheet. Furious, aren't you, because you're hungry? Swiftly, pleased with his own swiftness, Maury un-
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pinned the diaper. Wonderful little body, the firm thighs not seven inches long, joined by the marvelous tiny convoluted rose of maleness! Little man. Homunculus. He fastened the diaper firmly, settled the boy in the crook of his left arm, inserted the bottle, not too warm, just right.
The baby sucked and bubbled. He doesn't know anything but warmth of hands, warmth of voices. May he never know anything else! No, that's impossible. The gray eyes, light as opals, studied his father. One hand went up and curled around the father's finger with surprising strength. My son. I promise myself to remember this, no matter what else happens, how far he goes away from me, and he will, I promise to remember this day in October, with the sun on the floor and his hand around my finger.
He heard Agatha at the door and didn't move, wanting her to see them like that.
"I want to talk to you," she said, and at her harsh tone he turned. She was standing in the doorway, wearing the cranberry suit, holding a hat box, a shoe box and a newspaper.
"You lied to me," she said. "You don't collect rents. You're a racketeer. You collect policy slips. Here, it's in the paper."
"What's in the paper? What are you talking about?"
She held the front page for him to see. The police had raided an apartment rented by Mrs. Marie Schuetz and arrested a man named Peter Scorzio. A large operation had been uncovered, he read, with an estimated take of one hundred fifty thousand dollars a week.
"I doubt there can be two men named Peter Scorzio," Aggie said.
The baby had finished. Maury moved him over his shoulder to burp him. He didn't say anything.
"So the food we eat, the clothes I have on, everything that touches Eric, come from this dirt!" Her anger was cold and controlled. "Why did you lie to me, Maury? Why did you do such a thing?"
He began to tremble, not only because of her, but also because if he had stayed late today, they would have caught him too. Somebody must have slipped up, perhaps a new cop in the district.
"I was ashamed. I knew what you would think. So I took the easy way of lying and I shouldn't have."
"What are you going to do now?"
"What can I do?"
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"You can march over there in the morning and tell them you aren't coming back. Or no, you can call him up now, whoever runs the gang," she said scornfully, "and tell him you're not coming back. That's what you can do!"
"Then what? You think I haven't tried to see whether there was anything else? Yes, I found a job, one job, at the A & P for twenty-two dollars a week!"
"Well, take it!"
"Can we live on that? Milk for the baby, the pediatrician—can we? And now we've become used to more—"
"Do you think it was worth it? Oh, I should have guessed there was something odd! A boss sending gifts like that when Eric was born, and a wristwatch for me at Christmas. How naive I am! Do you know what? I feel dirty in these clothes, I could take this watch and throw it into the garbage pail!"
He let her talk; he couldn't think of anything to say. She began to cry. "But most of all, most of all, Maury, what might have happened to you! Suppose it had been you instead of that Scorzio! To spend years of your life in jail, a man like you, people like us, ruined, ruined—"
"He won't spend years of his life, not even a night. He'll be out on bail, he probably is already. And in a few weeks the charge will be dropped for lack of evidence."
She stared. "You mean, somebody will be paid off—a judge, or somebody."
"Exactly. That's the way it works."
"You think that's right?"
"Of course I don't think it's right. If I could change it I would, and as soon as I can get away from it I will. But in the meantime—"
"You're going back?"
"In the meantime I'm going back."
The telephone rang. He handed her the baby. "That'll be for me, telling me the new address for tomorrow."
He never knew what he would find when he got home. Agatha might be on the floor with Eric and a pile of blocks. Now that Eric was walking, the floor was always strewn with his toys, making a disorder which pleased Maury, a natural, cheerful disorder. The sound of their two voices, the child's and the mother's, would ring into the hall before he got the door open. And there would be the fragrance of cooking, something spicy and foreign; he thought with
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amusement, Aggie has turned out to be a pretty good Greek cook. He might open the door on all that.
Or else he might open it on a dark kitchen, a dim living room .and Eric crying in the playpen with his diapers soaked. Agatha would be asleep on top of the bedspread. He never knew.
He bought a book on alcoholism. It took him four days to muster courage enough to buy it. When he had unwrapped the book and pjaced it on the seat of his car he knew he had made the final admission to himself.
Above all, the book advised, don't lose your temper; it will accomplish nothing. More easily said than done! Yet he was being quite patient, he thought. Not that she was ever offensive, maudlin or nasty; she just merely began to feel hazy and fell asleep. But it was sick; he knew so little about it but he knew that much, and that people used alcohol to relieve their anxieties. Apparently his wife's anxieties were too much for her.
"Elena asked me today what kind of job you had," she reported once. "I'm sure they suspect something. Even if there were women around here for me to make friends with I'd be afraid and ashamed."
Such heavy guilt he had, remembering the place where she had been born, the white houses, the old, old calm and dignity. And now this. And all his fault.
While the key was still in the lock one evening he heard the delightful sound of crowing, and knew that the boy was in his high chair, spraying a mush of pureed carrots or spinach on his bib. He threw his coat on a chair and hurried into the kitchen. His sister Iris was feeding Eric.
He stared. "Where's Aggie?"
"Nothing's wrong! She was lying down when I got here. Had a little headache, that's all. So I told her to stay there and I'd feed Eric."
"Don't lie to me, Iris! Don't cover up for her! She's been drinking again and you know it."
"There," Iris said, "all through! Let Auntie Iris wipe your mouth, and we'll have some peaches."
"Damn it," Maury said. He beat his fists on his thighs. "Damn it to hell and back again."
"Don't do that now. Get it out of your system later, Maury. You're scaring Eric."
The child had turned his head away from the spoon to stare at
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Maury. He walked out of the room. He went to the bathroom. He walked to the living room window and looked out at nothing. He opened the bedroom door; it was dusk and he could not see Aggie's face. She was huddled on the bed asleep, her knees drawn almost to her chin. Fetal position, he thought disgustedly, and walked closer. Her hand with the wedding ring lay open on the pillow. Something made him touch it to see whether she would stir, but she did not. He was furious, pitying and grieving. He wished he could make sense of all the things he was feeling.
He went back into the kitch
en. Iris had put the baby into the playpen, where, now that his stomach was full, he would be content for half an hour, at least.
"There's nothing in the refrigerator except a roasting chicken. I guess Aggie intended it for supper. But it's already half past five."
"Make some scrambled eggs. I'm not hungry. I hope you aren't." He sounded gruff. He hadn't meant to.
"I'll make a jelly omelet," Iris said.
"Anything."
They ate silently. Suddenly Maury realized how ungracious, how self-absorbed he was being. "You've just finished mid-terms, haven't you? How did you do?" he inquired.
"I did well," she answered quietly. "And you don't have to be sociable, Maury. I know you have a lot of trouble."
He didn't answer.
