Sam's Legacy (32 page)

“‘First tell me, young man,' I can still hear him saying. ‘What do you think of Spinoza?' I did not know who he was talking about—a rival gangster? I wondered—and he was disappointed.” Ben stopped, closed his eyes. “The few details are for Sam, so he can know how they used to, as Mason would say, order things, yes?” Ben laughed, then leaned forward. Sam was glad that the room was dark. “Andy started to make a big thing about how grateful he was to the great Lipsky, but Lipsky told him ‘shush,' and asked him what his business was. ‘For my brother,' Andy says. ‘He has my father's money, to get our two older brothers over here from Galicia—in Russia now. He's supposed to give it to Harry Epstein. Tell him—'

“Lipsky looked at his fingernails. ‘Epstein? Epstein is a crumb. A
shonde,'
Lipsky declared. ‘See?' Andy said to me. Lipsky thought for a minute. ‘You seem like good boys. You love your father, and that is the most important thing in the world.
Chavayd es ahavicha v'es amechah
. The fifth commandment and the most important one. I will give you boys a tip. If you can get someone to take your money—it's not my line of business—the Yankees will win the pennant again. Forget about your brothers. Nobody can do anything now. But if I hear that things have changed, you will hear from me. Now boys, good-bye.'

“It was, of course, as if God had spoken. I could not doubt Lipsky's word on Epstein, and what were we to do with Poppa's money? We couldn't return it to him, and Andy could never have let Poppa know that he had contacts, for his business, with a man like Lipsky, who my father would have said was a curse on the Jews. We drove to a fancy restaurant whose name I don't remember, where they had to loan me a jacket and tie, and when Andy asked me what I thought of Lipsky's tip, I said, ‘It sounds good to me.' The year was 1924.”

Ben looked at Sam, and Sam felt his heart clench. Ben knew he would know, but, at the least, Sam would not give him the satisfaction of saying anything out loud. He waited; he saw, from the corner of his eye, that Tidewater was smiling knowingly, and that, next to him, Flo's face was grief-stricken, her color, even in the dark room, gray.

“As Sam could tell you as well as I—and Mason better than us both—the Yankees won pennants, consecutively, from 1921 to 1923, and again, from 1926 through 1928.” Ben wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “Happily, Mr. Epstein was found dead a year and a half later, in the trunk of his car.” Ben's eyes narrowed. “And my father—your grandfather, Sam—he told me then the words I leave with you: ‘Take, Benya! Take!'” Ben sat back, his mouth open, as if he were laughing, but with no sound coming out. “He cursed Epstein for having been murdered, and he cursed my mother, and my mother's father, and he walked downstairs, with me following him, and in the hot sun—it was then August—he spat seven times—I counted. Then, ‘America,' he said.

“He sent me back upstairs and he himself went to synagogue. It was not, I imagine, for Epstein that he said
kaddish.”
Ben smiled, let his voice drop lower. “The moral of the story, my friends? My father never went to work again. Never. Not for a single hour. If we wanted to, he said, Andy and I could support him.” Ben's smile was very broad. “All right?” he asked Flo.

“The story changes nothing,” she said. “You should stay here. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Don't use that word!” Ben's voice rose. “I said before, it was his decision, don't you see?”

“Exactly,” Tidewater said. “We see exactly. That's why—”

“You see then,” Ben went on, his voice cool, “why Poppa admired Sam so much. He knew something—he knew that Sam would maintain family tradition, that—”

“You are a fool sometimes,” Flo said. She stood. “I'll bring the presents. May I put the lights on?”

“It's Friday night,” Ben said. “No work, no lights. On Howard Street, on Friday nights, there were no lights. On Howard Street…”

“Then you should not,” Tidewater declared angrily, “mock what is happening here, where things have happened—before you were born—which command respect.” Tidewater looked at Sam. “When you are gone, I will share that story with your son. You, Ben Berman, have forfeited your chance and when, from your son, you—”

Ben waved a hand at Tidewater. “This side of you I can do without,” he said. “I've told you before. If you want your secrets, fine—but if you want them, why advertise them?”

“You should not mock what is happening here. You're a fool to leave us. When you're there, you'll see, you'll regret having gone away. What we have here is rare, what you will have there is nothing. Think: you mock it before you even know it—your resort-retirement community—doesn't that tell you enough?” Sam watched the man's narrow body, the long neck stretched forward toward his father. “Where you are going to is a place people pass through, from one death to another, as it were—the graveyard before the graveyard; where we are staying is a place that has substance. You do not kill great cities. In transition? There is more truth than irony in what you say.”

“All right,” Ben said. His eyes twinkled. “I'm sorry, yes? Let's say it was—well, just a phrase I was going through.”

Tidewater's body relaxed at once, seemed to dance, sitting there. “Ah Ben,” he said, smiling so happily that Sam felt his own stomach tighten.

Flo handed Ben a small package and he unwrapped it. “So that you'll write to us,” she said, as Ben showed the silver pen and pencil set to the others.

“Thank you,” Ben said. “From the gift wrapping I assume the proceeds did not go for muscular dystrophy.”

“No,” Flo said.

“Well,” Ben said. “I appreciate it.”

Flo kissed him on the forehead. Ben accepted a small package from Marion and untied the paper ribbon. Inside the wrapping paper was a box and inside the box was a leather travel kit: comb, brush, mirror, razor, toothbrush. Ben nodded a thank you to Marion.

“I hope you like it,” she said.

“No kiss?” Ben asked.

Marion's chair scraped the floor. Flo stepped away, took her seat again, and Marion went to Ben, kissed him on the cheek. He reached up, held her hand, seemed emotional suddenly. “You do forgive me, don't you? For—”

“Things happen,” Marion said, and sat down again.

Ben looked at Tidewater. “You go before me,” Tidewater said to Sam, and Sam obeyed; he stood, went to the closet, next to the kitchenette, and took out the valise, brought it to his father. He'd returned four hundred of the five hundred to Willie the Lump, and had spent three-quarters of the hundred he'd kept on the valise, but it was the kind of thing he wanted to give his father: a genuine leather valise, with Ben's initials embossed in gold, next to the handle. It was the kind of valise he'd wanted to have himself, when he'd been traveling. He'd always bought quality stuff, but never anything as expensive as this, and it was, he realized, something he now regretted. “Here,” he said.

“It's very—” Ben hesitated, wrinkled his forehead. “It's very handsome, Sam. Very appropriate.”

Sam sat down. “It has your initials on it—on the top,” he said.

Ben nodded. “‘S' is for Samson. I'm Samson,” Ben said dreamily, but before there could even have been time for Sam to pick up his cue, Ben went on: “But—with your situation—where did you get such money? This must have—”

“Don't,” Flo commanded. “Please don't, Ben.”

Ben looked at the others. “What my son did for me—I'd like to make it up to him. I've told you all the story.”

“That's right,” Tidewater said. “We don't need it.”

“All right,” Ben said, caressing the coffee-colored leather. He rubbed a hand across his forehead, then brushed his hair. “I'll be like the man who lamented the coming of baldness—hair today and gone tomorrow—”

The others groaned, then smiled, but Sam saw nothing to laugh about. He was glad that he'd done the right thing—he hadn't wanted to get Ben something the others would have looked down upon—but the money it cost did hurt, it did put him that much deeper into Sabatini's—the word made him laugh out loud—grip. Sure. Sam knew how far playing with words could get you.

“You like that?” Ben was saying to him, he realized. “Hair today…”

“Sure,” Sam laughed. “It's terrific, Ben,” and, using the word—thinking at once of his buddies in their houses on Long Island, of Herbie's carpeted wastebaskets and Japanese lanterns—Sam found that he couldn't stop laughing. He felt tears rolling down his cheeks, he heard the others laughing with him, enjoying themselves.

“I see what you mean,” Tidewater said to Sam.

“I'll say one thing for him,” Sam said, feeling giddy now. He wiped his eyes. “Sure. He's been a terrific father. Terrific!”

Sam howled at this, and to his surprise found that the others, Ben included, were laughing with him. Marion, her hand against his shoulder, was telling Sam to stop.

“See?” Ben said, calming down. “Do you see what I mean, Mason?”

“Ah Ben,” Tidewater said.

Ben stood. “‘Call me a cab,' the man said.” Ben flicked his fingers into Marion's face. “‘Poof,' I said. ‘You're a cab.'”

Sam's laughing stopped abruptly. “That's an old one,” he said, aloud.

“Like your father,” Ben said, and continued to laugh. “Tell him,” he said to Flo. “Tell him—”

“When you're old,” Flo said, reaching across for Sam's hand. “Ah, when you're old, Sam, the whole world is Jewish.”

“Good,” Tidewater said, his hand on Flo's arm. “That's very good,” he said.

Sam looked away, did not take Flo's hand. “It's all the same to me,” he said. “I'll put the valise away if you want—”

“No, no,” Ben said, still chuckling. “Leave it beside me. It comforts me. You couldn't have given me anything more—appropriate.”

“You said that before,” Sam said.

“I remember things,” Ben said. “I found a valise in my cab once, and the girl who called it to my attention—she was very beautiful. Do you know what was in the valise?” Ben waited, looked around. “I am certain, to this day, that the girl wanted me to know that the valise had been hers, though we both pretended it had not been hers. This was before your mother, Sam.” Ben waited, then shook his head. “No. I won't tell.”

“Please,” Flo said.

“No,” Ben said. “I shouldn't have mentioned it. I could have given other stories. My life as a taxi driver by Benjamin Berman—one would think, here in New York, that it was the king of professions—yet it was, in truth, dull and boring. Oh so boring. There were no interesting passengers, no back-seat births, no horde of people telling you just to drive around please. I watched the road, they watched the meter. The high point, in truth, was picking up by chance somebody you already knew—a relative, an old friend…. Famous people? They told you who they were before you'd recognized them.” Ben sighed, swayed slightly from side to side, but his eyes twinkled. “It was, in short, the kind of life a man had to be driven to—”

Sam didn't mind hearing the others laugh. He remembered Stella talking about wheeling and dealing. He could add something to that, with Ben: sure, they were a regular team, with their professions—one wheeled, the other dealed.

“Except for Sam,” Tidewater was saying, “we've passed the halfway point, and do you know what? I prefer it that way. Until a certain point, one lives with one's friends, one does things together—as we do every day, downstairs. And yet, one doesn't, after all. When one is with friends, I discover, one begins to spend much of the time reminiscing about the things one has done together previously—the way we might share tonight in time to come. The talking becomes the doing, don't you see? At a given moment in time, the reminiscing becomes more than half and the doing less than half. Things move in opposite directions until, near the end, we become almost all memory. Thus, you see, Ben, my gift to you tonight is the story I have already begun giving to Sam.”

Ben sighed. “Didn't I tell you?” he said. “My son will take my place.”

Tidewater's hand was resting on the handle of the leather valise. Sam nodded to himself: they could say what they wanted, about friendship or memories or dying or anything else, but they would never be able to deny that the valise was there.

“People worry about mugging,” Ben said, performing. “How best to deal with muggers? It's simple: hypnotism.” He looked around, smiled, but saw that nobody was smiling with him. “Schools of hypnotism. The world's finest hypnotists will train you to—” He lifted his glass of wine. “We couldn't have evening classes, though, could we, Samela?—people are so afraid to go out at night these days….”

“It is your leaving, Ben,” Tidewater stated, calmly, “now a certainty, which has—the good coming from the bad? the honey in the dead lion's carcass?—pushed me into putting my story into something resembling a narrative. Our talks, in my room, are over.”

“Of course,” Ben said. “But tell me one thing, what I asked you before: what do you want to
do
with your story, once it is on paper?”

“Do with it?” Tidewater asked. “Nothing, of course. It is enough to set it down.”

“Ah,” Ben said, seeing an opening. “But of what
use
will it be?”

Then Tidewater smiled, his eyes on Sam's face. “What use? Don't you know the answer to that, Ben?” Sam looked away and saw that Flo was sitting stiffly, her back straight, her hands at her sides, as if frozen in her chair. “To save your son's soul.”

Then the two men were laughing together, and though their laughter was soft, even gentle, Sam didn't like it. “My son, my son,” Ben hummed.