The collected stories, p.4
The Collected Stories, page 4
“O.K., O.K. Don’t be bitter, Anna.” He stretched forth a benedicting arm. “Come in peace, go in peace. Of course I’ll take her. I like her. She’s my kid.”
“Bitter?” she asked.
Peter sighed. He turned the palms of his hands up as though to guess at rain. Anna knew him, theme and choreography. The sunshiny spring afternoon seeped through his fingers. He looked up at the witnessing heavens to keep what he could. He dropped his arms and let the rest go.
“O.K.,” he said. “Let’s go. I’d like to see your place. I’m full of ideas. You should see my living room, Anna. I might even go into interior decorating if things don’t pick up. Come on. I’ll get the ladder out of the basement. I could move a couple of trunks. I’m crazy about heavy work. You get out of life what you put into it. Right? Let’s ditch the kid. I’m not your enemy.”
“Who is?” she asked.
“Off my back, Anna. I mean it. I’ll get someone to keep an eye on Judy. Just shut up.” He searched for a familiar face among the Sunday strollers. “Hey, you,” he finally called to an old pal on whom two chicks were leaning. “Hey, you glass-eyed louse, c’mere.”
“Not just any of your idiot friends,” whispered Anna, enraged.
All three soft-shoed it over to Peter. They passed out happy hellos, also a bag of dried apricots. Peter spoke to one of the girls. He patted her little-boy haircut. “Well, well, baby, you have certainly changed. You must have had a very good winter.”
“Oh yes, thanks,” she admitted.
“Say, be my friend, doll, will you? There’s Judy over there. Remember? She was nuts about you when she was little. How about it? Keep an eye on her about an hour or two?”
“Sure, Petey, I’d love to. I’m not busy today. Judy! She was cute. I was nuts about her.”
“Anna,” said Peter, “this is Louie; she was a real friend that year you worked. She helped me out with Judy. She was great, a lifesaver.”
“You’re Anna,” Louie said hospitably. “Oh, I think Judy’s cute. We were nuts about each other. You have one smart kid. She’s really smart.”
“Thank you,” said Anna.
Judy had gone off to talk to the ice-cream man. She returned licking a double-lime Popsicle. “You have to give him ten cents,” she said. “He didn’t even remember me to give me trust.”
Suddenly she saw Louie. “Oooh!” she shrieked. “It’s Louie. Louie, Louie, Louie!” They pinched each other’s cheeks, rubbed noses like the Eskimoses, and fluttered lashes like kissing angels do. Louie looked around proudly. “Gee whiz, the kid didn’t forget me. How do you like that?”
Peter fished in his pockets for some change. Louie said, “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s on me.” “O.K., girls,” Peter said. “You two go on. Live it up. Eat supper out. Enjoy yourselves. Keep in touch.”
“I guess they do know each other,” said Anna, absolutely dispirited, waving goodbye.
“There!” said Peter. “If you want to do things, do things.”
He took her arm. His other elbow cut their way through a gathering clutter of men and boys. “Going, going, gone,” he said. “So long, fellows.”
Within five minutes Anna unlocked the door of her new apartment, her snappy city leasehold, with a brand-new key.
In the wide foyer, on the parquet path narrowed by rows of cardboard boxes, Peter stood stock-still and whistled a dozen bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. “Mama,” he moaned in joy, “let me live!”
A vista of rooms and doors to rooms, double glass doors, single hard-oak doors, narrow closet doors, a homeful of rooms wired with hallways stretched before. “Oh, Anna, it’s a far cry … Who’s paying for it?”
“Not you; don’t worry.”
“That’s not the point, Mary and Joseph!” He waved his arms at a chandelier. “Now, Anna, I like to see my friends set up this way. You think I’m kidding.”
“I’m kidding,” said Anna.
“Come on, what’s really cooking? You look so great, you look like a chick on the sincere make. Playing it cool and living it warm, you know …”
“Quit dreaming, Petey,” she said irritably. But he had stripped his back to his undershirt and had started to move records into record cabinets. He stopped to say, “How about me putting up the Venetian blinds?” Then she softened and offered one kindness: “Peter, you’re the one who really looks wonderful. You look just—well—healthy.”
“I take care of myself, Anna. That’s why. Vegetables, high proteins. I’m not the night owl I was. Grapefruits, sunlight, oh sunlight, that’s my dear love now.”
“You always did take care of yourself, Peter.”
“No, Anna, this is different.” He stopped and settled on a box of curtains. “I mean it’s not egocentric and selfish, the way I used to be. Now it has a real philosophical basis. Don’t mix me up with biology. Look at me, what do you see?”
Anna had read that cannibals, tasting man, saw him thereafter as the great pig, the pale pink roast.
“Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,” Anna said.
“Ah no, that’s not what I mean. You know what you see? A structure of flesh. You know when it hit me? About two years ago, around the time we were breaking up, you and me. I took my grandpa to the bathroom one time when I was over there visiting—you remember him, Anna, that old jerk, the one that was so mad, he didn’t want to die … I was leaning on the door; he was sitting on the pot concentrating on his guts. Just to make conversation—I thought it’d help him relax—I said, ‘Pop? Pop, if you had it all to do over again, what would you do different? Any real hot tips?’
“He came up with an answer right away. ‘Peter,’ he said, ‘I’d go to a gym every goddamn day of my life; the hell with the job, the hell with the women. Peter, I’d build my body up till God Hisself wouldn’t know how to tear it apart. Look at me Peter,’ he said. ‘I been a mean sonofabitch the last fifteen years. Why? I’ll tell you why. This structure, this … this thing’—he pinched himself across his stomach and his knees—’this me’—he cracked himself sidewise across his jaw—’this is got to be maintained. The reason is, Peter: It is the dwelling place of the soul. In the end, long life is the reward, strength, and beauty.’ “
“Oh, Peter!” said Anna. “Are you working?”
“Man,” said Peter, “you got the same itsy-bitsy motivations. Of course I’m working. How the hell do you think I live? Did you get your eight-fifty a week out in Scroungeville or not?”
“Eight-fifty is right.”
“O.K., O.K. Then listen. I have a vitamin compound that costs me twelve-eighty a hundred. Fifty dollars a year for basic maintenance and repair.”
“Did the old guy die?”
“Mother! Yes! Of course he died.”
“I’m sorry. He wasn’t so bad. He liked Judy.”
“Bad or good, Anna, he got his time in, he lived long enough to teach the next generation. By the way, I don’t think you’ve put on an ounce.”
“Thanks.”
“And the kid looks great. You do take good care of her. You were always a good mother. I’ll bet you broil her stuff and all.”
“Sometimes,” she said.
“Let her live in the air,” said Peter. “I bet you do. Let her love her body.”
“Let her,” said Anna sadly.
“To work, to work, where strike committees shirk,” sang Peter. “Is the ladder in the cellar?”
“No, no, in that kitchen closet. The real tall closet.”
Then Peter put up the Venetian blinds, followed by curtains. He distributed books among the available bookcases. He glued the second drawer of Judy’s bureau. Although all the furniture had not been installed, there were shelves for Judy’s toys. He had no trouble with them at all. He whistled while he worked.
Then he swept the debris into a corner of the kitchen. He put a pot of coffee on the stove. “Coffee?” he called. “In a minute,” Anna said. He stabilized the swinging kitchen door and came upon Anna, winding a clock in the living room whose wide windows on the world he had personally draped. “Busy, busy,” he said.
Like a good and happy man increasing his virtue, he kissed her. She did not move away from him. She remained in the embrace of his right arm, her face nuzzling his shoulder, her eyes closed. He tipped her chin to look and measure opportunity. She could not open her eyes. Honorably he searched, but on her face he met no quarrel.
She was faint and leaden, a sure sign in Anna, if he remembered correctly, of passion. “Shall we dance?” he asked softly, a family joke. With great care, a patient lover, he undid the sixteen tiny buttons of her pretty dress and in Judy’s room on Judy’s bed he took her at once without a word. Afterward, having established tenancy, he rewarded her with kisses. But he dressed quickly because he was obligated by the stories of his life to remind her of transience.
“Petey,” Anna said, having drawn sheets and blankets to her chin. “Go on into the kitchen. I think the coffee’s all boiled out.”
He started a new pot. Then he returned to help her with the innumerable little cloth buttons. “Say, Anna, this dress is wild. It must’ve cost a dime.”
“A quarter,” she said.
“You know, we could have some pretty good times together every now and then if you weren’t so damn resentful.”
“Did you have a real good time, Petey?”
“Oh, the best,” he said, kissing her lightly. “You know, I like the way your hair is now,” he said.
“I have it done once a week.”
“Hey, say it pays, baby. It does wonders. What’s up, what’s up? That’s what I want to know. Where’d the classy TV come from? And that fabulous desk … Say, somebody’s an operator.”
“My husband is,” said Anna.
Petey sat absolutely still, but frowned, marking his clear forehead with vertical lines of pain. Consuming the black fact, gritting his teeth to retain it, he said, “My God, Anna! That was a terrible thing to do.”
“I thought it was so great.”
“Oh, Anna, that’s not the point. You should have said something first. Where is he? Where is this stupid sonofabitch while his wife is getting laid?”
“He’s in Rochester. That’s where I met him. He’s a lovely person. He’s moving his business. It takes time. Peter, please. He’ll be here in a couple of days.”
“You’re great, Anna. Man, you’re great. You wiggle your ass. You make a donkey out of me and him both. You could’ve said no. No—excuse me. Petey—no. I’m not that hard up. Why’d you do it? Revenge? Meanness? Why?”
He buttoned his jacket and moved among the cardboard boxes and the new chairs, looking for a newspaper or a package. He hadn’t brought a thing. He stopped before the hallway mirror to brush his hair. “That’s it!” he said, and walked slowly to the door.
“Where are you going, Peter?” Anna called across the foyer, a place for noisy children and forgotten umbrellas. “Wait a minute, Peter. Honest to God, listen to me, I did it for love.”
He stopped to look at her. He looked at her coldly.
Anna was crying. “I really mean it, Peter, I did it for love.”
“Love?” he asked. “Really?” He smiled. He was embarrassed but happy. “Well!” he said. With the fingers of both hands he tossed her a kiss.
“Oh, Anna, then good night,” he said. “You’re a good kid. Honest, I wish you the best, the best of everything, the very best.”
In no time at all his cheerful face appeared at the door of the spring dusk. In the street among peaceable strangers he did a handstand. Then easy and impervious, in full control, he cart-wheeled eastward into the source of night.
The Loudest Voice
There is a certain place where dumbwaiters boom, doors slam, dishes crash; every window is a mother’s mouth bidding the street shut up, go skate somewhere else, come home. My voice is the loudest.
There, my own mother is still as full of breathing as me and the grocer stands up to speak to her. “Mrs. Abramowitz,” he says, “people should not be afraid of their children.”
“Ah, Mr. Bialik,” my mother replies, “if you say to her or her father ‘Ssh,’ they say, ‘In the grave it will be quiet.’ “
“From Coney Island to the cemetery,” says my papa. “It’s the same subway; it’s the same fare.”
I am right next to the pickle barrel. My pinky is making tiny whirlpools in the brine. I stop a moment to announce: “Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Campbell’s Vegetable Beef Soup. Campbell’s S-c-otch Broth …”
“Be quiet,” the grocer says, “the labels are coming off.”
“Please, Shirley, be a little quiet,” my mother begs me.
In that place the whole street groans: Be quiet! Be quiet! but steals from the happy chorus of my inside self not a tittle or a jot.
There, too, but just around the corner, is a red brick building that has been old for many years. Every morning the children stand before it in double lines which must be straight. They are not insulted. They are waiting anyway.
I am usually among them. I am, in fact, the first, since I begin with “A.”
One cold morning the monitor tapped me on the shoulder. “Go to Room 409, Shirley Abramowitz,” he said. I did as I was told. I went in a hurry up a down staircase to Room 409, which contained sixth-graders. I had to wait at the desk without wiggling until Mr. Hilton, their teacher, had time to speak.
After five minutes he said, “Shirley?”
“What?” I whispered.
He said, “My! My! Shirley Abramowitz! They told me you had a particularly loud, clear voice and read with lots of expression. Could that be true?”
“Oh yes,” I whispered.
“In that case, don’t be silly; I might very well be your teacher someday. Speak up, speak up.”
“Yes,” I shouted.
“More like it,” he said. “Now, Shirley, can you put a ribbon in your hair or a bobby pin? It’s too messy.”
“Yes!” I bawled.
“Now, now, calm down.” He turned to the class. “Children, not a sound. Open at page 39. Read till 52. When you finish, start again.” He looked me over once more. “Now, Shirley, you know, I suppose, that Christmas is coming. We are preparing a beautiful play. Most of the parts have been given out. But I still need a child with a strong voice, lots of stamina. Do you know what stamina is? You do? Smart kid. You know, I heard you read ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ in Assembly yesterday. I was very impressed. Wonderful delivery. Mrs. Jordan, your teacher, speaks highly of you. Now listen to me, Shirley Abramowitz, if you want to take the part and be in the play, repeat after me, ‘I swear to work harder than I ever did before.’ “
I looked to heaven and said at once, “Oh, I swear.” I kissed my pinky and looked at God.
“That is an actor’s life, my dear,” he explained. “Like a soldier’s, never tardy or disobedient to his general, the director. Everything,” he said, “absolutely everything will depend on you.”
That afternoon, all over the building, children scraped and scrubbed the turkeys and the sheaves of corn off the schoolroom windows. Goodbye Thanksgiving. The next morning a monitor brought red paper and green paper from the office. We made new shapes and hung them on the walls and glued them to the doors.
The teachers became happier and happier. Their heads were ringing like the bells of childhood. My best friend, Evie, was prone to evil, but she did not get a single demerit for whispering. We learned “Holy Night” without an error. “How wonderful!” said Miss Glacé, the student teacher. “To think that some of you don’t even speak the language!” We learned “Deck the Halls” and “Hark! The Herald Angels” … They weren’t ashamed and we weren’t embarrassed.
Oh, but when my mother heard about it all, she said to my father: “Misha, you don’t know what’s going on there. Cramer is the head of the Tickets Committee.”
“Who?” asked my father. “Cramer? Oh yes, an active woman.”
“Active? Active has to have a reason. Listen,” she said sadly, “I’m surprised to see my neighbors making tra-la-la for Christmas.”
My father couldn’t think of what to say to that. Then he decided: “You’re in America! Clara, you wanted to come here. In Palestine the Arabs would be eating you alive. Europe you had pogroms. Argentina is full of Indians. Here you got Christmas … Some joke, ha?”
“Very funny, Misha. What is becoming of you? If we came to a new country a long time ago to run away from tyrants, and instead we fall into a creeping pogrom, that our children learn a lot of lies, so what’s the joke? Ach. Misha, your idealism is going away.”
“So is your sense of humor.”
“That I never had, but idealism you had a lot of.”
“I’m the same Misha Abramovitch, I didn’t change an iota. Ask anyone.”
“Only ask me,” says my mama, may she rest in peace. “I got the answer.”
Meanwhile the neighbors had to think of what to say too.
Marty’s father said: “You know, he has a very important part, my boy.”
“Mine also,” said Mr. Sauerfeld.
“Not my boy!” said Mrs. Klieg. “I said to him no. The answer is no. When I say no! I mean no!”
The rabbi’s wife said, “It’s disgusting!” But no one listened to her. Under the narrow sky of God’s great wisdom she wore a strawberry-blond wig.
Every day was noisy and full of experience. I was Right-hand Man. Mr. Hilton said: “How could I get along without you, Shirley?”
He said: “Your mother and father ought to get down on their knees every night and thank God for giving them a child like you.”
He also said: “You’re absolutely a pleasure to work with, my dear, dear child.”
Sometimes he said: “For godsakes, what did I do with the script? Shirley! Shirley! Find it.”
Then I answered quietly: “Here it is, Mr. Hilton.”
Once in a while, when he was very tired, he would cry out: “Shirley, I’m just tired of screaming at those kids. Will you tell Ira Pushkov not to come in till Lester points to that star the second time?”
