The Collected Stories (24 page)

Mrs. Darwin stopped. Then she looked up at Mrs. Hegel-Shtein and Faith. “He was an only son,” she said. Mrs. Hegel-Shtein gasped. “You said an only son!” On deep tracks, the tears rolled down her old cheeks. But she had smiled so peculiarly for seventy-seven years that they suddenly swerved wildly toward her ears and hung like glass from each lobe.

Faith watched her cry and was indifferent. Then she thought a terrible thought. She thought that if Ricardo had lost a leg or so, that would certainly have kept him home. This cheered her a little, but not for long.

“Oh, Mama, Mama, Tessie never guessed what was going to happen to her. We used to play house and she never guessed.”

“Who guesses?” screamed Mrs. Hegel-Shtein. “Archie is laying down this minute in Florida. Sun is shining on him. He's guessing?”

Mrs. Hegel-Shtein fluttered Faith's heart. She rattled her ribs. She squashed her sorrow as though it were actually the least toxic of all the world's great poisons.

However, the first one to live with the facts was Mrs. Hegel-Shtein. Eyes dry, she said, “What about Brauns? The old Braun, the uncle, an idiot, a regular Irgunist, is here.”

“June Braun?” Faith asked. “My friend June Braun? From Brighton Beach Avenue? That one?”

“Of course, only, that isn't so bad,” Mrs. Darwin said, getting into the spirit of things. “Junie's husband, an engineer in airplanes. Very serious boy. Papa doesn't like him to this day. He was in the movement. They bought a house in Huntington Harbor with a boat, a garage, a garage for the boat. She looked stunning. She had three boys. Brilliant. The husband played golf with the vice-president, a goy. The future was golden. She was active in everything. One morning they woke up. It's midnight. Someone uncovers a little this, a little that. (I mentioned he was in the movement?) In forty-eight hours, he's blacklisted. Good night Huntington Harbor. Today the whole bunch live with the Brauns in four rooms. I'm sorry for the old people.”

“That's awful, Mama,” Faith said. “The whole country's in a bad way.”

“Still, Faith, times change. This is an unusual country. You'll travel around the world five times over, you wouldn't see a country' like this often. She's up, she's down. It's unusual.”

“Well, what else, Mama?” Faith asked. June Braun didn't sorrow her at all. What did June Braun know about pain? If you go in the dark sea over your head, you have to expect drowning cheerfully. Faith believed that June Braun and her husband whatever-his-name-could-be had gone too deeply into the air pocket of America whence all handouts come, and she accepted their suffocation in good spirit.

“What else, Mama? I know, what about Anita Franklin? What about her? God, was she smart in school! The whole senior class was crazy about her. Very chesty. Remember her, she got her period when she was about nine and three-quarters? Or something like that. You knew her mother very well. You were always in cahoots about something. You and Mrs. Franklin. Mama!”

“You sure you really want to hear, Faithy, you won't be so funny afterward?” She liked telling these stories now, but she was not anxious to tell this one. Still she had warned Faith. “All right. Well, Anita Franklin. Anita Franklin also didn't guess. You remember she was married way ahead of you and Ricardo to a handsome boy from Harvard. Oh, Gittel, you can imagine what hopes her mother and her father had for her happiness. Arthur Mazzano, you know, Sephardic. They lived in Boston and they knew such smart people. Professors, doctors, the finest people. History-book writers, thinking American people. Oh, Faithy darling. I was invited to the house several times, Christmas, Easter. I met their babies. Little blondies like you were, Faith. He got maybe two Ph.D.s, you know, in different subjects. If someone wanted to ask a question, on what subject, they asked Arthur. At eight months their baby walked. I saw it myself. He wrote articles for Jewish magazines you never heard of, Gittel. Then one day, Anita finds out from the horse's mouth itself, he is fooling around with freshmen. Teenagers. In no time it's in the papers, everybody in court, talking talking talking, some say yes, some no, he was only flirting, you know the way a man flirts with youngsters. But it turns out one of the foolish kids is pregnant.”

“Spanish people,” said Mrs. Hegel-Shtein thoughtfully. “The men don't like their wives so much. They only get married if it's a good idea.”

Faith bowed her head in sorrow for Anita Franklin, whose blood when she was nine and three-quarters burst from her to strike life and hope into the busy heads of all the girls in the fifth and sixth grades. Anita Franklin, she said to herself, do you think you'll make it all alone? How do you sleep at night, Anita Franklin, the sexiest girl in New Utrecht High? How is it these days, now you are never getting laid anymore by clever Arthur Mazzano, the brilliant Sephardic Scholar and Lecturer? Now it is time that leans across you and not handsome, fair Arthur's mouth on yours, or his intelligent Boy Scouty conflagrating fingers.

At this very moment, the thumb of Ricardo's hovering shadow jabbed her in her left eye, revealing for all the world the shallowness of her water table. Rice could have been planted at that instant on the terraces of her flesh and sprouted in strength and beauty in the floods that overwhelmed her from that moment on through all the afternoon. For herself and Anita Franklin, Faith bowed her head and wept.

“Going already, Faith?” her father asked. He had poked his darling birdy head with poppy pale eyes into the sun-spotted room. He is not especially good-looking. He is ugly. Faith has often thanked the Germ God and the Gene Goddess and the Great Lords of All Nucleic Acid that none of them looks like him, not even Charles, to whom it would not matter, for Charles has the height for any kind of face. They all look a little bit Teutonish, like their grandmother, who thinks she's German, just kind of light and even-featured, with Charles inclining to considerable jaw. People expect decision from Charles because of that jaw, and he has learned to give it to them—the wit of diagnosis, then inescapable treatment, followed by immediate health. In fact, his important colleagues often refer their wives' lower abdominal distress to Charles. Before he is dead he will be famous. Mr. Darwin hopes he will be famous soon, for in that family people do not live long.

Well, this popeyed, pale-beaked father of Faith's peered through the room into the glassy attack of the afternoon sun, couldn't focus on tears, or bitten lips for that matter, but saw Faith rise to look for her jacket in the closet.

“If you really have to go, I'll walk you, Faithy. Sweetheart, I haven't seen you in a long time,” he said. He withdrew to wait in the hallway, well out of the circle of Mrs. Hegel-Shtein's grappling magnetism.

Faith kissed her mother, who whispered into her damp ear, “Be something, don't be a dishrag. You have two babies to raise.” She kissed Mrs. Hegel-Shtein, because they had been brought up that way, not to hurt anyone's feelings, particularly if they loathed them, and they were much older.

Faith and her father walked through the light-green halls in silence to the life-giving lobby, where rosy, well-dressed families continued to arrive in order to sit for twenty minutes alongside their used-up elders. Some terrible political arguments about Jews in Russia now were taking place near the information desk. Faith paid no attention but moved toward the door, breathing deeply. She tried to keep her father behind her until she could meet the commitments of her face. “Don't rush, sweetheart.” he said. “Don't rush, I'm not like these old cockers here, but I am no chicken definitely.”

Gallantly he took her arm. “What's the good word?” he asked. “Well, no news isn't bad news, I hope?”

“So long, Chuck!” he called as they passed the iron gate over which, in stunning steel cursive, a welder had inscribed
The Children of Judea.
“Chuckle, chuckle,” said her father, grasping her elbow more firmly, “what a name for a grown-up man!”

She turned to give him a big smile. He deserved an enormous smile, but she had only a big one available.

“Listen, Faithl, I wrote a poem. I want you to hear. Listen. I wrote it in Yiddish, I'll translate it in my head:

“What do you say, Faithy? You know a whole bunch of artists and writers.”

“What do I say? Papa.” She stopped stock-still. “You're marvelous. That's like a Japanese Psalm of David.”

“You think it's good?”

“I love it, Pa. It's marvelous.”

“Well … you know. I might give up all this political stuff, if you really like it. I'm at a loss these days. It's a transition. Don't laugh at me. Faithy. You'll have to survive just such events someday yourself. Learn from life. Mine. I was going to organize the help. You know, the guards, the elevator boys—colored fellows, mostly. You notice, they're coming up in the world. Regardless of hopes. I never expected it in my lifetime. The war. I suppose, did it. Faith, what do you think? The war made Jews Americans and Negroes Jews. Ha ha. What do you think of that for an article? ‘The Negro: Outside In at Last.

“Someone wrote something like that.”

“Is that a fact? It's in the air. I tell you, I'm full of ideas. I don't have a soul to talk to. I'm used to your mother, only a funny thing happened to her, Faithy. We were so close. We're still friendly, don't take me the wrong way, but I mean a funny thing, she likes to be with the women lately. Loves to be with that insane, persecution, delusions-of-grandeur, paranoical Mrs. Hegel-Shtein. I can't stand her. She isn't a woman men can stand. Still, she got married. Your mother says, Be polite, Sid; I am polite. I always loved the ladies to a flaw, Faithy, but Mrs. Hegel-Shtein knocks at our room at 9 a.m. and I'm an orphan till lunch. She has magic powers. Also she oils up her wheelchair all afternoon so she can sneak around. Did you ever hear of a wheelchair you couldn't hear coming? My child, believe me, what your mother sees in her is a shady mystery. How could I put it? That woman has a whole bag of spitballs for the world. And also a bitter crippled life.”

They had come to the subway entrance. “Well, Pa, I guess I have to go now. I left the kids with a friend.”

He shut his mouth. Then he laughed. “Aaah, a talky old man …”

“Oh no, Pa, not at all. No. I loved talking to you, but I left the kids with a friend, Pa.”

“I know how it is when they're little, you're tied down, Faith. Oh, we couldn't go anywhere for years. I went only to meetings, that's all. I didn't like to go to a movie without your mother and enjoy myself. They didn't have babysitters in those days. A wonderful invention, babysitters. With this invention two people could be lovers forever.

“Oh!” he gasped, “my darling girl, excuse me …” Faith was surprised at his exclamation because the tears had come to her eyes before she felt their pain.

“Ah, I see now how the land lies. I see you have trouble. You picked yourself out a hard world to raise a family.”

“I have to go. Pa.”

“Sure.”

She kissed him and started down the stairs.

“Faith.” he called. “can you come soon?”

“Oh, Pa,” she said, four steps below him, looking up, “I can't come until I'm a little happy.”

“Happy!” He leaned over the rail and tried to hold her eyes. But that is hard to do, for eyes are born dodgers and know a whole circumference of ways out of a bad spot. “Don't be selfish, Faithy, bring the boys, come.”

“They're so noisy, Pa.”

“Bring the boys, sweetheart. I love their little goyish faces.”

“O.K., O.K.,” she said, wanting only to go quickly. “I will, Pa, I will.”

Mr. Darwin reached for her fingers through the rail. He held them tightly and touched them to her wet cheeks. Then he said, “Aaah …” an explosion of nausea, absolute digestive disgust. And before she could turn away from the old age of his insulted face and run home down the subway stairs, he had dropped her sweating hand out of his own and turned away from her.