Lieberman's Day (3 page)

Abe balanced the sandwich in his hand as he rose and padded quietly to the television, turned it on with the volume low, and found the American Movie Channel. His thin, underweight, bloodhound face smiled in the white glow of
Mildred Pierce.
It was the scene in which Joan Crawford bakes a cake for an ungrateful Ann Blyth.

Abe's blue cotton robe billowed against his narrow body as he went barefoot to the armchair and sat back down again. Abe Lieberman standing, or in any position of repose, was not an impressive figure. Slightly shy of 145 pounds and slowly shrinking from five seven, his sad and baggy eyes, little white mustache, and curly gray hair made him look a good five years older than he was.

Early-early-morning television viewing was one of Abe's responses to chronic insomnia.
New York Times
crossword puzzle books done in the bathtub were another, and finally, so were novels. He had already done a crossword, as always in ink, making two or three mistakes and growing impatient before he could finish. He had read a chapter from a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, Bess's favorite author. Sleep, or the hint of it, had not come, so Abe had made himself the sandwich, poured himself a large glass of decaffeinated iced coffee from the thermos in the refrigerator, and headed for the living room, hoping that a Joan Crawford movie or anything with John Garfield would be on.

Prayers were sometimes answered.

Things had gotten better for Abe in the last month since it had become clear that his daughter, Lisa, and his grandchildren, Barry and Melisa, were not extended weekend guests but semipermanent inhabitants of the house on Birchwood Avenue. The realization had resulted in Lisa's old room upstairs being reshuffled with beds for Barry and Melisa, and the small guest room across from it, which had been used by Bess and Abe for storage, being converted into a bedroom for Lisa.

This acceptance of long-term occupation had liberated the living room, where Barry and Melisa had camped for more than a month while Lisa and her husband, Todd, did battle over life, love, commitment, responsibility, freedom, and custody of the 1989 Chevy, the house in Evanston, several hundred books that neither of them really cared about, and the crucial question of who would pay the outstanding bills for Barry's braces.

Lisa and Todd each lived under the illusion that Abe was on their side. The illusion was fostered by the fact that he was a good listener. No, he was a great listener. He had been a cop for more than thirty-five years and had learned two lessons: First, no one wants advice; second, if you shut up and listen, eventually anyone will confess to something. He had also learned that it was pointless to try to pass these valuable truths on to others.

Son-in-law Todd Cresswell—a
goyisha
name that made Abe sigh whenever he realized that his grandchildren would bear it and his grandson would pass it on—had told Abe of Cassandra. He had told Abe more than once of Cassandra, for Todd was an associate professor of classics at Northwestern and given to frequent quotations from dead Greeks. Abe now had, as birthday and Hanukkah gifts over the years from Todd, the complete Ancient Greek tragedies. On sleepless nights when he felt that nothing could be worse, he read of people whose lives were infinitely worse.

But Cassandra was Abe's favorite. Cassandra, like Abe, was given the gift of prophecy and the curse of never being believed.

Zachary Scott was being unctuous on the nineteen-inch screen across the room. He showed teeth. He wore a smoking jacket. He smoked too much. Anyone in his right mind would know better than to trust Zachary Scott, but even if he had been in the room with them Abe would have known better than to tell that to Joan Crawford.

Abe curled his toes into the carpet and considered turning up the heat as he took another bite of his sandwich, knowing that telltale crumbs would give him away in the morning. Outside, the wind wailed down the corridor of small 1950s houses and Abe tried not to think about whether it was snowing again and whether he would be able to start his car. Lisa's car was in the garage, protected, so she could be certain of transportation for Barry and Melisa and herself. Abe's car was parked on the street, huddled angry and sullen, probably deciding whether or not it would start after being sufficiently pampered or coaxed.

That could wait until morning. For now there was a radish-and-chicken sandwich and Ann Blyth already acting like a spoiled kid who bore, Abe suddenly realized, an uncanny and uncomfortable resemblance to his own daughter, who was sleeping almost directly over his head.

“Who's that?”

The voice came from the bottom of the stairs next to the kitchen.

“Jack Carson,” Lieberman said, looking at his grandson, who blinked and scratched his groin.

“I gotta pee,” said Barry.

“Sounds reasonable,” said Abe.

“Bad.”

“You got evil pee? Waste no more time. Exorcise the cursed body fluid.”

“You sound like my dad,” said Barry.

“Use my bathroom. Be my guest.”

Barry staggered into the bathroom and closed the door.

Above the clanging of dishes in Mildred Pierce's restaurant, Abe could hear a faint tinkle from the bathroom followed by the flushing of the toilet and the running of the faucet in the sink.

He took another bite from the sandwich and turned his attention to the screen as the bathroom door opened. The toilet was still filling with water. Abe would probably have to get up, take the porcelain top off the tank, and jiggle the rubber ball until it decided to fall into place and cover the hole.

“What are you watching?” Barry whispered, taking a step toward his grandfather.

“Mildred Pierce,”
said Abe. “You want some sandwich?”

“What kind?” asked Barry, advancing toward his grandfather's chair, his eyes on the television set.

Barry's two-piece pajamas, about a size too large, were white and covered with Chicago Cubs logos. His braces glittered in the pale light from the television screen.

“Chicken and radish,” said Lieberman as Barry sat on the sofa.

“Guess so,” said the boy with a shrug.

“I'm not torturing you into a commitment here,” said Abe.

“I'll have some if it's cut off the part where you ate.”

“Here's a half, clean. Unmarred by your grandfather's tainted teeth.”

Barry took the half-sandwich solemnly, examined it, turned it over, and took a small bite.

He looked like his father. No doubt. He didn't look like a Lieberman. And he didn't look like Bess's family, the Zelakovskys, which wouldn't have been so bad. No, Barry looked like a Cresswell.

“How old are you?” asked Lieberman.

“Grandpa,” Barry said with a sigh and a mouthful of sandwich. “You know.”

“Twelve,” said Lieberman. “I know. It's a rhetorical question. An opener.”

“Like you ask a stoolie?” asked Barry.

“Belcher,” Lieberman corrected. “You've been watching
Little Caesar
too many times.”

Barry nodded and took another bite of his sandwich. Lieberman watched the movie, trying to remember the name of the actor talking to Joan Crawford.

“Grandpa?”

“Yeah.”

“You think my father is an asshole?”

Lieberman looked at his grandson, considered the question, and scratched his chin. He was quite clean shaven. He had taken care of that in his bath less than half an hour earlier.

“No,” said Lieberman. “Who said he was?”

Barry shrugged.

“You heard your mother tell someone on the phone.”

Barry nodded.

“Your father is not an asshole. Nor is your mother. They are both stubborn, confused, directionless, and self-destructive. That is the human condition. Watch this part here. Joan Crawford's eyes. The way they go up.”

“Which one is Joan Crawford?” asked Barry, whose half-sandwich was almost gone.

“The one with the hair piled up,” said Lieberman.

Barry nodded seriously, finishing his sandwich with a final bite.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Ask me a question,” said Lieberman, turning his head toward his grandson.

“You ever really shoot anybody? I mean, I know you tell me and Melisa you shot hundreds of bad guys, but really.”

“Yes,” said Lieberman.

“Really?”

“Really, yes.”

“How many?”

“Three, an average of one every eleven years,” said Lieberman.

“Did any of them die?”

“One.”

“Should I shut up?” Barry said.

“Maybe for a few years,” said Lieberman.

“My friend Alex, the one who came over last week …”

“I remember. Looks like a parrot.”

“He doesn't believe you're a policeman. He says you don't look like a policeman.”

“Alex the Parrot is right.”

“But you are a policeman.”

“I don't look like one.”

“You're an anomaly,” said Barry seriously, with his father's face.

“Let's say I am in a perpetual disguise.”

“You like my father?”

“I like your father.”

“My mother?”

“I love your mother.”

Barry got up and ambled across the room in front of the television.

“I'm sorry. I can't talk anymore. I've got to get some sleep and get up for school.”

“I'm not offended,” said Lieberman.

“You look sad, Grandpa.”

“I always look sad. The family curse. I look a little better in the late spring when the Cubs come back from Arizona.”

“Good night. Coffee's no good for you.”

“Good night, Barry. This isn't real coffee.”

Lieberman listened to the sound of his grandson's feet going up the creaking stairs, heard the bedroom door open and close, and followed the faint sound of the boy as he crossed the bedroom and bounced into bed.

Lieberman knew the phone would ring soon. It was not a sudden feeling, just a sense within him. He was rising when the first ring came. In spite of his stiff, arthritic knees he was across the room as the ring was dying. He entered the kitchen and reached for the phone as it began its second ring, which he cut off before it could reach through the doors and wake Bess.

“Hello,” he said.

“Rabbi,” came Bill Hanrahan's voice.

Lieberman imagined the handsome, flat, pink-cheeked Irish face of his burly partner, imagined it reflecting the strange sadness he heard in the wavering tenor. Hanrahan had been more than reasonably sober for more than four months, but there was something of the grape or mash in his voice tonight.

“You all right, Father Murphy?”

“Abraham, it's a homicide.”

Lieberman waited.

“Abe, it's your nephew, Davey.”

The sound stayed inside Lieberman, but he felt it explode in his stomach and order him to vomit. He fought it back.

“You there, Abe?”

“I'm here, Bill. What happened?”

“There's more, Abe—his wife. She was shot too. She's alive, emergency room, Edgewater Hospital.”

Lieberman couldn't see. His eyes were wet and the familiar kitchen an unfamiliar blur.

“The baby,” said Lieberman, softly, slowly. “She's pregnant.”

“Touch and go, Rabbi. Touch and go. I'm on Devon and Western. You want, I'll pick you up in fifteen minutes, God and traffic willing.”

“No, I'll drive. Does my brother know?”

“Hospital called him. He's on the way there.”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen,” Hanrahan confirmed, and hung up.

Lieberman looked at the phone, afraid that if he hung it up he'd convince himself that it was a dream, late-night radishes. But it was no dream. The telephone clicked and bleated, a long insistent bleat. He hung it up, looked at his trembling hands, and, as his father and his father before him and their fathers before them back to the beginning of recorded history had done, Abe Lieberman gripped the open flap of his favorite robe and pulled until the cotton tore.

He stood for a beat in his torn robe, rocking slightly, his bare feet aware of the cool kitchen linoleum. And he remembered a night in 1944 or '45. He and his brother, Maish, had been working for Uncle Murray, who had a small deli-grocery for the summer tourists in Union Pier, Michigan. Uncle Murray had sent them home after two weeks—the sad-faced brothers had driven customers away—but Maish, who had by then acquired the nickname Nothing-Bothers Maish, had declared to Abe on the bus back to Chicago that he would someday have his own deli.

It seemed a modest-enough ambition and Maish had achieved it, but now Abe Lieberman stood in his own kitchen and imagined not his brother as he was now, but as a sour-faced, chubby little boy who would have to be told that his own son had died.

Lieberman stopped rocking, took a deep breath, and walked quickly and as quietly as he could back to his bedroom. He took forever to open the door and enter, listening for Bess's even breathing. There was no light and he wanted none. He made his way around the foot of the bed, past the pink chair, and away from the highboy that had been a wedding gift from Bess's brother. He dressed carefully, knowing that if Bess awoke he would have to tell her. It wasn't that he was afraid that she could not cope. No, she would probably cope far better than he was doing, but he saw no reason to wake her when her strength would be needed in the morning and who knew how far beyond.

Lieberman succeeded and, using the key that he wore on a chain around his neck even when he slept, opened the drawer in the night table on his side of the bed, removed the pistol, put it in his holster, and closed the drawer.

Bess slept on, not quite snoring, but asleep.

He closed the door gently and walked to the kitchen, where he left a note saying he would call her. He didn't think the note would be necessary. He would try to call her a little after seven with the news. Who could know where he might be at the hour when the red-eyed alarm clock woke his wife?