Evergreen (32 page)

“I couldn’t sleep, I was afraid my twisting and turning would wake you, so I got up.”

“I’m talking about the wine.”

“I’ve told you, it relaxes me. I thought it would make me sleep. Don’t act as though I were drunk or something.”

“It’s a bad habit, Aggie. I don’t like it. You shouldn’t depend on it to solve your problems. Anyway, it’s expensive.”

“I used the fifteen dollars that you wanted me to spend on a dress and I bought a couple of bottles. Don’t be angry, Maury.”

The job lasted another month. On the Friday when he got his final pay he dragged home. He went quietly up the stairs hoping that George Andreapoulis wouldn’t hear him and come out with an evening greeting. On this night he was in no mood for old-world courtesy.

He opened the door. Tell her now, get it over with and then sit down and puzzle out what we can do. Pray heaven that Andreapoulis has a lot of typing these next few weeks.

Agatha was sitting on the sofa, with her hands clasped in her lap. She looked like a little girl in dancing class, waiting to be asked to dance. “Maury, I’m pregnant,” she said.

Everything happened to them against a background of heat. When I am old, Maury thought, and I remember New York and all our troubles, I’ll remember the subway grinding and the sour smell of hot metal. I’ll remember the signs that read
No Jobs
and damp sheets and Agatha lying on top of them with her belly swelling. And the public library where I spent the days after noon rather than go home: if you didn’t find a job early in the day there was no use looking any further that day; you might as well go to the library.

“Summer is the worst time to be looking for a job,” said George Andreapoulis sympathetically.

“The winter will be worse. I’ll need an overcoat this year and new galoshes. My luck, the snow will be knee-high this year.”

“Maybe,” George said doubtfully, “one of my clients will have a job … I’ll keep an eye open. I drew up a will for the man who has the delicatessen over on the avenue. He’s doing pretty well and maybe he’ll take on a man in the fall.”

One morning in September, Agatha said, hesitating, “I don’t know how you would feel about this; promise you won’t be angry?”

“I won’t be angry.”

“Well, then, I was thinking; you know my father has a cousin, I’ve mentioned him, I always called him Uncle Jed. He’s really just the husband of my father’s cousin, and she’s dead now, but I’m sure he hasn’t forgotten me. He never had children and he was so fond of me. I remember he always sent the most beautiful dolls for Christmas and when I was sixteen he gave me my first pearls.”

“Yes, yes.” He stifled his impatience with her prattling. They ought to be so happy now. No worries. Damn world to spoil what should be so beautiful. His child and Agatha’s child, his child growing in her, its little fingernails and eyelashes. So beautiful.

“…     vice-president in charge of trusts at the Barlow-Manhattan Bank. I didn’t want to involve him because I didn’t want Daddy to hear about it, but that’s false pride and now I don’t care. Would you go to see him?”

He was silent. Crawl before those people? Beg?

“I’d call him first, of course. Maury?”

For her. For the baby, the soft thing growing in her. When it comes out it will be pink, naked and soft; I’ll have to warm it, feed it, fight for it.

“Call him in the morning. I’ll go,” he said. “Did you get polish for my black shoes?”

The door swung inward from Madison Avenue to a lobby with murals of Peter Stuyvesant, of Indians on the trail, the Treasury, George Washington taking the oath of office, hansom cabs on Fifth Avenue, children rolling hoops in Central Park. No pushcarts, no tenements.

He walked tall and easily across the moss-green carpet. A Yale graduate, as well educated, as presentable and worthy as anyone; what was he afraid of?

Jedediah Spencer
, it said on the door. Funny! That old Hebrew name had dignity when you saw it in brass on a
mahogany door. Nobody he knew would ever think of giving a child a name like that nowadays.

Everything was dark brown, the wood, the leather and Mr. Spencer’s suit.

“So you are Agatha’s husband.… How do you do?”

“How do you do, sir?”

“Agatha telephoned to say that you were on your way. I’m sorry she didn’t call sooner. She could have saved you the trip.”

“Sir?”

“We have no openings in the bank.”

“Sir, we weren’t thinking of that. We thought—Agatha thought—that in your position, knowing so many people in so many businesses, perhaps you could recommend me somewhere.”

“I make it a policy never to ask personal favors of our clients.”

Mr. Spencer opened a drawer and took out a pen. His hand was hidden by a large photograph in a silver frame, and Maury did not see what he was writing until a paper was handed to him. It was a check for a thousand dollars.

“You can cash it at a window in the lobby,” Mr. Spencer said. He looked at his watch. “Naturally I don’t want Agatha to be in want. Perhaps it will tide you over until you can straighten yourself out.”

Maury looked up. In the cool, correct face he read intense dislike. “Straighten yourself out.” It’s not I who need straightening out, he thought. It’s the world. And he laid the check back on the desk. “Thank you very much. I don’t want it,” he said, turned on his heel and walked out.

His hands were sweating and his heart pounded. He felt a terrible shame. It was like one of those dreams in which you are walking on a grand avenue when suddenly you look down and find that you have gone out in your underwear. After the shame came nausea.

There was a drugstore on the corner. He had had only coffee for breakfast, and he knew the nausea was from hunger. He wondered whether he could afford a sandwich and
an ice cream soda, a thick, rich soda, with cream on top.

He sat down at a table, too weak to sit at the counter stool, even though a table meant another dime for a tip. The cool bastard, he thought. He didn’t even have the kindness or decency to say he would try to help, even if he didn’t mean it. He had so much contempt for me that he didn’t even brother to pretend.…

A man came in and took the other seat. Maury became aware that the man was looking at him steadily. Then the man said, “I think I know you. Saw you at a wedding in Brooklyn a couple of years ago.”

“Yes?” Maury was cautious.

“Yeah. Solly Levinson—may he rest in peace—his boy Harry got married. You’re Joe Friedman’s boy, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I don’t—”

“Name’s Wolf Harris. I knew your old man when he was a kid. I wouldn’t be high-class enough for him now, though.”

Maury was silent. A strange encounter. And since the man had so frankly been staring at him, he returned the stare, seeing a keen, immaculate face perhaps fifty years old, a face like thousands of others on the streets of the city except for the fierce, intelligent eyes. His clothes were dark and expensive; his watch and cuff links were gold; the shoe that was exposed in the aisle was handmade.

“I wouldn’t have made that crack about your old man if I didn’t happen to know he kicked you out.”

At another time, when Maury was younger and not as battered, when he had more pride—or more false pride, if you wanted to call it that—he would not have allowed such an intrusion. But as it was, he said only, “I know two things about you. You have a remarkable memory and a good information service.”

The man laughed. “Information, no. Just an accident. I met Solly’s daughter on the street, you know the fat kid who talks too much?”

“I know. Cecile.”

“So she told me about you. Not that I give a damn or wanted to hear. But my memory, that’s something else again. A memory I’ve got, never forget a fact. Never. That you can’t take away from me. What’s funny?”

“I was thinking, I don’t believe anybody could take anything away from you.”

Wolf stared a second and laughed. “You’re damn right! You’re okay. You’re not so dumb yourself!”

“Thanks.”

The waitress came with pad and pencil to take the orders.

“Gimme a double cheeseburger, French fries, onions on the side, a malted and a couple of Danish.”

Maury said, “I’ll have a tuna sandwich on toast.”

“To drink?” The girl was impatient.

“Nothing. Just the sandwich.”

“Come on! That’d feed a canary. Give him the same as me, miss. That’s right. On me.”

Maury flushed. Was it so visible, then, the hunger? No, it was the suit. The collar of his shirt was worn, and perhaps he had seen Maury’s shoes when he walked in.

“Place is a dump. But it’s quick and I’ve got to see a man at Forty-fifth and Madison at one.”

There was a silence. Maury had nothing to say. Then Mr. Harris leaned forward. “Well? What’s new? What are you doing these days?”

He felt—he felt like such a child, timid and obedient. Why couldn’t he just say, I don’t want to talk about my business. I’m not in the mood to talk at all. Why? Because he had nothing and was nobody. And that’s what happened to you when you had nothing and were nobody.

“The news is that my wife is expecting a baby. And what I’m doing, unfortunately, is nothing.”

“Unemployed, eh?”

“I had a job in a shoe store but they closed the store.”

“What can you do besides sell shoes?”

Bitterness rose in Maury. He could taste its heat. “To
tell you the truth, nothing. Four years at Yale and the result—nothing.”

“I quit school at the seventh grade,” the man said, with slight amusement.

“And?” Maury raised his eyes to meet the other’s sharp, bright regard.

“And I’m in a position to offer you a job, if you want to take it.”

“I’ll take it,” Maury said. “You don’t know what it is.”

“Whether I can do it, you mean? If I don’t know how, I’ll learn.”

“Can you drive a car?”

“Of course. But I haven’t got a car.”

“No problem. I’ll buy you one.”

“And what do I do with it?”

“You drive around, Flatbush section, drive around to some addresses I’ll give you, pick up some papers every morning and take them to an apartment.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all. You haven’t asked me about the pay.”

“Whatever it is, it’s more than I’m earning now.”

“You’re really beat, kid, aren’t you?” The tone was surprisingly gentle. “Well, put your head up. I’m offering you seventy-five dollars a week.”

“Just for driving around and delivering papers?”

“And for keeping your mouth shut. You understand?”

“I think I do. I’ll ask you the rest when were out on the sidewalk.”

“You’ve got the idea. Eat. And if you’re still hungry after all that, speak up. I like people who speak up. At the right time, that is.”

He had been starved, not just because of this morning, but hungry for weeks. He never ate quite enough of real food, just crackers and canned soup, saving the milk, the oranges and the lamb chops for Aggie. He felt the good warmth deep inside now: the meat, the cheese, the rich
malted milk.
Policy
. That’s what it must be, of course.
Numbers
. Well, it didn’t hurt anybody, did it? Nobody suffered or died because of it. The rich gamble for thousands in casinos and that’s all right; why can’t the poor try their luck with pennies? So I’m rationalizing, and I know I am. But the refrigerator will be filled; well buy things for the baby and some winter clothes for Aggie. I won’t have to avoid Andreapoulis when the rent is due.

They went out to the sidewalk. Madison Avenue was friendly. Two vivid young office girls went by laughing and glanced at Maury. A man went into a haberdashery store. The window was full of good shirts and nice foulard ties. The world was friendly.

“What a piece of luck that I happened to sit down at your table, Mr. Harris,” Maury said.

“The name’s Wolf. And here, this is my number, where you’ll call me tomorrow morning. Come in and I’ll lay it all out for you. No use talking more now. You know what it’s all about.”

“I know,” Maury said. “And you can rely on me absolutely. I want you to know that.”

“If I didn’t know that I wouldn’t talk to you in the first place. I size men up in two seconds flat. What are you going to tell your wife?”

“That I collect rents. She wouldn’t understand.”

“I figured as much. High-class, is she?”

“Sort of.”

“Yeah, well. Call me tomorrow then. At ten-thirty. No earlier. No later. And here’s a twenty for expenses in the meantime. Wait, here’s another. Buy yourself a pair of shoes.”

“I don’t need twenty for shoes. I can get a pair for six dollars.”

“Twenty. I don’t like cheap shoes.”

There was an autumn chill in the air and Maury brought the baby in. He pulled the perambulator up the steps and parked it in the hall by the stairs; the Andreapoulises were
nice about things like that. Anyway it was a kind of ornament, that carriage. It was the finest English pram, navy blue leather and chrome, the kind you saw on Park Avenue pushed by a nursemaid in a dark blue coat and veil. They’d sent it from the office when Eric was born. No doubt that meant Wolf Harris had ordered it, the way he did everything, so lavishly, so meticulously: funeral flowers and a basket of fruit when Scorzio’s mother died; presents for weddings and First Communions and Bar Mitzvahs. He had an astounding memory.

Maury lifted the sleeping baby. The warm, fragrant head flopped on his shoulder. He carried him upstairs and laid him, still asleep in his crib. He looked at his watch. A half hour before the next bottle. He slipped a finger under the diaper. Wet. Well, better not to disturb his sleep for that; he’d only be wet again in another fifteen minutes. He smiled, feeling expert and competent. On afternoons when he came home early, and they were frequent because his hours were so easy, he was glad to let Aggie go out. This whole summer in the months since Eric’s birth he’d sat with a book on the front step while Eric slept. Some of the women in the neighborhood, especially the foreign-born, nudged each other as they passed. They thought it was funny for a man to be doing that. To hell with them.

Aggie would be home soon. He’d given her a nice check with which to go out and buy clothes. She had already bought a suit the color of cranberries, and looked delightful in it, as slender as she had been before the baby. There was nothing like it, the feeling a man had when he commanded: Go out and buy yourself something, buy what you want. A man felt like, he felt like—a man!