Before My Life Began (42 page)

“Oh you are so good
inside
, David, don't you know that? You're a truly good
and
strong person, and there aren't many of your kind left. It's just so hard for me to watch you walking through the world, pulled on from so many sides, without my being able to help. I keep wanting to run out in front of you—the court jester, yes?—so I can steer you away from Evil and Hate and Anger and Cruelty and all the forces of Darkness—so I can point you to the true path—to righteousness and to light and to happiness. To a world that doesn't turn in on itself only. To contract and grow narrow. That's so much the style these days—to contract and compress life—and what I want for us is a life that keeps
expanding
, that keeps opening and growing larger and larger and richer and richer. Let me be your guide and companion, please, David?
Please?
You won't be sorry. Not ever—”

“I know.” I felt light, weightless. The words were there, waiting, and they came easily: “I'll call Abe in the morning.”

“May I take the phone off the hook, in case they try to get to you before then?”

“Yes.” I pressed my lips to her stomach, kept them there. “It makes sense—that play you saw, with me in it. I don't know why, but it makes sense to me. I like those pictures you get inside your head. Is that okay?”

“At least.”

“Beau Jack wanted us to look at his present before we went to sleep.”

I went to the kitchen, came back with the package and with a dish full of ice cubes, for her cheeks. She smiled, said that with her complexion nobody would notice the marks anyway. I untied the ribbon, opened the white paper. There was a box inside. Gail opened it, lifted the lid. Two small gold hearts, about an inch high, rested on cotton.

I lifted one heart, turned it over. There was an inscription on the back:

David loves Gail
.

“This one is yours.”

I gave it to her and she turned it over, read the words, pressed the heart against her own. I looked at my gift.

Gail loves David
.

I turned out the light and lay down next to her.

“I'm glad you don't do everything I say,” Gail said after a while, and she could hardly get her next sentence out, she began weeping so freely. “I'm glad you didn't whack the baby when I told you to. Because you are strong, and if you had…”

“Shh.”

10

W
AS IT POSSIBLE
that so much life could be contained in such a small body, and that merely to hold it close to me could fill me with happiness? Her head was nestled now against my neck, her soft body curled around my shoulder. Her thin legs hung down, kicked every time she let loose with a pained cry. I kept one hand on her bottom, the other on the back of her head, and I talked to her, told her that everything would be all right, that her father was with her. Did she know how much I loved her, what a sweet thing she was? Did she know that she weighed just a little more than a bag of sugar?

Her body contracted, eyes pressed tight so that they were two black dashes, and she let loose with a long, watery explosion of gas that, for such a little thing, seemed miraculous. Then her body sagged and she nuzzled against me as if she were trying to crawl inside my neck headfirst. She breathed more easily, regularly. I set her down gently on the changing table, careful to cup the back of her head with my hand, but she whimpered and clung to me. I told her that we had to change her diaper again because if we didn't her rash would get worse. But when I took my hand out from beneath her head, a head no larger than a softball, she started crying hysterically again. I lifted her to my shoulder and she stopped. I walked back and forth with her for a while, until she seemed relaxed and drowsy, then tried to set her down again.

She wailed furiously, tiny legs thrashing. I gave in. I cradled her head against my shoulder, kissed her tiny ears and the top of her downy little head. I sniffed at the indentation there, the fontanelle, where the skull had not yet closed. Such a sweet, vulnerable little thing! Was it possible that everyone in the world had once been this small and weak?

“Are you still
up?”

Gail stood in the doorway, shielding her eyes from the light. Emilie was asleep in my arms.

“Have you been walking with her like this all night?”

“Come look—”

Gail leaned on me lazily, kissed my breast, then kissed the baby.

“See how beautifully she can sleep? Isn't she amazing?”

“No more amazing than you are, sweetheart. It's almost four in the morning. I gave her her last feeding before eleven. You've been doing this for hours. Come on. Come to bed and let me feed her and then she'll go back to sleep again.” She sniffed. “You forgot to change her—”

“Every time I tried to put her down, she squawked.”

“But
David
—!” She sighed. “Come on then. My breasts are starting to drip.”

“She
knows
me, Gail. She knows who I am. I mean, her body knows my body in some mysterious way, don't you see? And when her body is unhappy—”

“Come on, Dad. You may have manifold and marvelous powers, but the power to produce milk from your breasts is still not one of them.”

I brought Emilie into the bedroom and set her next to me. Gail lay down, flicked her nipple against Emilie's lips. Emilie gurgled, whimpered, reached up with her fists. Her mouth closed around Gail's nipple and the last thing I heard before I tumbled into sleep was the liquid sound of Emilie's mouth drawing the sweet, warm milk into her.

Abe sat at a table in the rear of Garfield's, his back to the wall. He smiled at me, but I sensed that something was wrong. His smile was too broad. It reminded me of my mother's smile.

“How's the proud father this morning?”

“Kind of beat. The baby was up most of the night.”

Abe stood, offered me his hand, and I felt a piece of cold metal between his palm and mine. Still smiling, he sat and whispered through his teeth that I was to show no reaction. I was to reach for a handkerchief, wipe off some sweat, drop the key into my back pocket.

I did what he said. He talked about having visited my mother the day before, having seen his father for the first time since the war. While he talked he motioned with his eyes, toward the window. I waited a few seconds, took my grilled cheese sandwich and Coke off the tray, turned to set the tray down on an empty table, and saw that two of Fasalino's men were sitting near the entrance. Abe talked about the fur blanket his father was making for Emilie. He twisted his Army ring, red stone to palm, and laughed to himself.

“It was crazy, the way I felt warm toward him suddenly. He was good to me when I was a kid, Davey. Proud of me.
Maladyets
, he'd say, when he took me around with him.
‘Maladyets
—my fine American son.' I loved to watch him work. I give him credit there. He had a real talent.”

Abe reached across, touched the back of my hand, then looked away quickly, as if embarrassed.

“I found myself thinking of you, of the way you used to draw so well, of what a good ballplayer you were. It's hard to do something well in this crazy world, don't you think?”

“Yes.” I hesitated, then asked the question that had been with me all morning: “What was I like when I was a child, Abe? Would you tell me?”

“What do you mean, what were you like?”

“I mean, what was I like when I was a baby like Emilie—what did you feel toward me when I was her age and you held me—when I was the age before I can remember things about myself?”

“You were a swell kid, Davey. The best.”

“You're not answering my question.”

“Now you listen to me and you listen carefully,” he said. His voice was low and hard. “And while you do you nod and you smile and you eat as if we're talking about your kid, or about why the Dodgers keep losing to the Yankees in the World Series. Do you hear me?”

“I hear.”

“The key is for a safe-deposit box in a bank upstate. It's in the town where we used to go before the war, to the bungalow colony. You take a bus from the Port Authority Terminal to Ellenville, and from Ellenville you go to Parksville. The Parksville Savings Bank. You get a taxi or you hitch a ride. If anything happens today—I'll get a message to you at suppertime, so you be at your mother's place then—you don't wait, is that clear? You don't go back home and you don't telephone anyone and you don't send any messages. You just get your ass to the bus terminal and you get on the bus.”

“But why—”

“There's no time, and even if there were I wouldn't explain things to you. The more you know, the more danger you'll be in. You just listen. The box is in your name, with your signature on file. There won't be any problems. The Parksville Savings Bank. Do you understand?”

“I understand. But what if I don't go?” His brown eyes softened, as if they might melt. My question frightened him, and I realized that this pleased me. “What if I just stay here until you tell me all the things I want to know?”

“They won't touch Emilie and Gail. They won't bother Evie. If we're no longer a danger to them, you and me, they won't ask for trouble they don't need.”

“Why should I believe you? How do you know what they'll do?”

“I know because I'm not that different from them.”

Silence.

“What about Tony then?” I asked. “What would you
not
do to him? What if I said I won't—”

“There's no
time
, goddamn you, Davey. Don't you understand? There's no time for this. Just trust me.”

“You taught me never to trust anybody.”

“Don't get too smart. You go. Do you hear me? You do what I say.”

“I'll do what I want.”

He lunged for my wrist, stopped himself, glanced toward where Fasalino's men were, reached back and, in one fluid motion, smoothed his hair down with the hand that had started for me. He swallowed, and when he spoke again, his voice was soft.

“Do what I say, Davey, please? Things don't always work out exactly the way you think they will. I made myself believe that things could go backwards, that we could wipe out the past. I should never have let you get involved.”

“I made my own decisions.”

“Maybe. Who knows? Who knows about stuff like that, if we choose or if things choose us? For now just try to listen to me and to trust me. And try to get that look off your face if you can. Work on your sandwich. Your jaw is set like a crowbar.”

I bit into my sandwich. The melted cheese was cold and dry, like plastic.

“I'll do what I want.”

“Now isn't the time to play big shot, all right? Do me that favor. I don't want your family to be hurt. If you're still here—if things don't work out today—they won't hesitate to use them to get at you and I wouldn't like that. I figured that much out, at least. Just believe me that—”

I saw their shadows move across our table an instant before I saw them. They were on either side of Abe.

“You just stay put if you know what's good for you, kid. Don't try to be a hero like your uncle here. And you keep your hands on top of the table, Mr. Litvinov. No trouble, okay? We don't want nobody getting hurt.”

Abe picked up his coffee mug. His hand was steady.

“We'd like for you to come with us. Somebody wants a word with you in private.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Fasalino.”

“Our appointment is for five this afternoon. You're early.”

“Mr. Fasalino changed his mind.”

“I didn't.”

The man to Abe's right put his hand on Abe's arm, and the instant he did the other man was at my side, his hand pressing down on my shoulder to keep me from rising.

“I think you boys are making a mistake,” Abe said. “Why don't you go pay for your lunch, then haul your butts out of here. Tell Mr. Fasalino that I have a busy schedule today but that I'll be there when I said I would. I'm making time for him, you see.”

“We don't want no trouble. We don't want no business with the boy.”

“And if you were thinking of trying to force me to come with you, I'd advise you to look back at your table first, where you were just sitting.”

The men looked. Little Benny and Turkish Sammy were there. Turkish Sammy had both hands on the table, palms down. Little Benny touched his jacket pocket, breast high, where it bulged. Behind them, on the other side of the window, Lefty Kolatch and Monk Solloway stood waiting, hands in pockets. Abe smiled. Benny rose slightly from his chair, showed his yellow teeth in a broad grin and, just like a tap dancer at the end of his routine, he tipped his fedora toward Fasalino's men.

“Mr. Goldstein called me last week,” I offered, after Fasalino's men were gone. “I wanted you to know. There's a college in Kentucky that's interested in having me play for them. They're willing to give me a full scholarship, to pay for housing, to pay for Gail's tuition too, if she wants to take courses.”

“I always felt bad about that, didn't I? About the way they blacklisted you because of me. I'm pleased, Davey. I'm glad we can make that right. I told you things would work out, one way or the other.”

“It's just a small liberal arts college and they don't play in any of the big tournaments, but Mr. Goldstein knows the coach—they went to City College together—and there's a large Jewish community nearby in Lexington with lots of rich doctors and lawyers. The college is trying to get some of them involved—for donations, I guess. They're trying to upgrade their athletic program and—”

“—and they're looking for some talented Jewish city kids, right? Some shrewd, hustling, driving school-yard players who'd go through brick walls to score, right?”

“I suppose. I'll be older than the others—the freshmen anyway—but I think I'd like to go to college. Gail and I have talked it over. Her parents have offered to help. Do you mind?”