Evergreen (74 page)

And why do I still believe in You in spite of it? Theo says because I need a father image. I don’t know, I don’t think so. I can’t think at all. I don’t know why I still trust You. Yet I do. I have to, or I couldn’t live.

But I ask You all the same, when will You stop torturing us?

The telephone rang and she rose to answer it. She spoke a minute and came back to the table.

“That was Theo,” she said quietly. “Iris has just had the baby. A boy. They’re both well.”

They told him it was a slight attack, a mild coronary. “You’re better off, in a way, than a man who hasn’t had a warning and goes right on doing the wrong things. Why, you’ll last for years,” they assured him, “as long as you exercise and eat right.” But he always had done both of those things. “And don’t worry,” they said. Hah!

His mind wandered. Came from having nothing to do. He’d gone through the
Times
twice today and now had climbed upstairs to his round room and spread plans on the table. They were assembling the land for a shopping center in Florida. It ought to be a bonanza with all the building going on, the condominiums and retirement colonies. Now his mind sharpened, narrowed to specifics. As soon as they’d let him out of the house, by the first of the month, they said, he’d have to round up some of the chain stores. They’d want a five-and-ten, certainly; a drugstore; one of those popular shoe outfits and then a few assorted boutiques. They’d need some spectacular landscaping, an alley of royal palms down the middle, perhaps. They could call it Palm Walk.

He moved restlessly around the room. Anna had been right—it was a wonderful little place for him. He liked looking down at tree tops. He liked hearing the sounds of the household two floors below; he could hear just enough to feel he was at home, and still not be disturbed.

He felt well again, and looked well too, even had a lot of
hair left without any gray in it. Anna had to dye hers: he insisted. Her face was still so firm; why should her hair be old? It was dyed the burnished russet it had been naturally. She looked fifteen years younger. She was still strong, walked gracefully. You could tell a lot by the way a person walked. As for himself, he couldn’t believe he was seventy-three, that it was seven years since Eric died—But better not to think of that, or of a lot of other things. Now was now. True, he had a load on his mind, a huge business with a couple of hundred men and their families dependent on him, but he could cope with it. He wanted to cope; that’s how you knew you were alive. When you had one problem after the other, you solved one and moved on to the next.

Malone, now, he’d got very old. His lips trembled and his eyes watered. He won’t last as long as I will, Joseph thought. Malone had been ready to retire, hadn’t been up to the pressure, and fortunately had had enough sense to know it. He was better off out in Arizona. Besides, Malone had sons.

We should have had more children, he protested for the thousandth time. Iris’ young boys were the only future: their own future, not their grandfather’s. As it should be. But it would be good, all the same, to have one of them take over, one of them who’d care for the work and the name he had made! Land. He’d been right about its being the basis of all wealth. If you managed it correctly. But Jimmy’s going to be a doctor, like his father; you can tell already. He chuckled: last week Iris found a mouse cadaver under his bed. They all say Jimmy’s the apple of my eye; well, Philip’s the other apple, then. Philip, my joy, my darling. Coming downstairs in his pajamas to hear Theo’s quartet, and we thought he’d come for the cake! They laugh at me, but I still say, who can tell? Rubinstein and Horowitz were young once. I think he plays like an angel. We never had anyone like him before in our family. Except that niece of Anna’s, that poor girl Liesel. Maybe the music comes through her, some strain way back. Not from my
side, goodness knows. So Philip won’t want my business either, that’s for sure.

And Steve: hah! Set a bomb under it more likely, with all that socialism of his, or anarchism, whatever you want to call it! No, that’s not fair. He’s only a boy, not sixteen yet, and the times are radical. It’s a fad. He’s got a long way to go. Still, very troubling.

Thank goodness, Laura’s okay. Anna all over again, with that look on her face as if the world had been made brand-new every morning!

They’ll all go their ways without me. Everything will go on. These trees will get taller. People will come and go to school and the office and the supermarket; I won’t be here. Kid yourself, if you want, about your energy and your ambition and not looking your age; kid yourself and let other people kid you too—as if a man can’t tell when they’re soft-soaping him! But the drift is there. Drifting, that’s the feeling.

You just don’t seem to need much anymore. Sex—forget about that! And food. You don’t enjoy it, at least not the way you once did. Even sleep: how sweet it is to sleep all night through! You don’t realize it until you start waking up every morning before dawn. It’s still dark outside and you lie there with your eyes open, watching the light come through the blinds and hearing winter wind or else birds’ first calling, like questions in the darkness, minutes apart. It’s the loneliest time. Anna’s still asleep. Her shoulder is fragrant; she puts perfume on before she goes to bed. We’re separate after all; every human being—separate and alone. You never know that, or maybe don’t admit it, until the time comes near to die.

Anna says: “Why don’t you take it a little easier? You could leave more to the Malone boys. Just keep a hand in one or two days a week to see how things are going.”

No. What would I do here all day? Sit around and listen to my arteries harden? Work is—it’s cheerful. When I’m away for more than a couple of days I have a kind of creeping melancholy and it scares me. That’s why I never
liked to take trips. It’s the one way I disappointed Anna, because she’d have gone hiking all over the globe and up every mountain if I’d been willing. Work and the company, Friedman-Malone; they’re my
life!
Anna knows that.

He moved to the television set and switched it on. The voice came first, then a picture flaring gradually into the great blank eye of the screen. It was a replay of the Kennedy funeral the previous week: the dirge, the celebrities walking across the bridge toward Arlington and the horse with the stirrups on backwards. The horse.

Eighteen years since that other president had died.… He remembered the stores on Madison Avenue displaying the black-bordered portrait. Eighteen years! And this was worse: the young man with his head shot away. He turned the television off.

Death and violence. Violence and death. When your heart gives out it can’t be helped, but deaths like this one! Kennedy’s and Maury’s, the smashed-up, bloody deaths. And Benjie Baumgarten’s drowned face. What had made him think of that now? Then Eric. All unnecessary.

Oh, Maury, oh, my son, if I could have you back again I wouldn’t care what you did. If I’d made it easier for you and that young girl, taken the pressure off, then maybe—Almost twenty-five years ago. And your son. I tried to make up to you through him, as if perhaps you could know I was loving and being good to your boy. But he didn’t want it, not what I had to give. He didn’t know what he wanted, Maury. He didn’t know where he wanted to belong. Maybe in a world where everybody was the same. (Hah! When was there ever, when will there ever, be a world like that?) When he was with one kind he felt guilty about turning his back on the other. He never told us, but we knew. Your mother was the one; she figured it out, and she was right. He felt more guilty about turning his back on our side because we’re the sufferers, the weak ones. Yet he was tempted toward the sunny side, the Gentile way. Who can blame him? And then he felt guilty all over again. He had
no roots. That’s one of the overdone words of our day but I don’t know another that fits as well.

Still, Eric wasn’t the only person in his position. Perhaps he made too much of it? Should just have put it in the back of his head and
lived?
But he was sensitive; he
minded
more, about everything. It seems we’re a family like that, too soft, thinking too much about ourselves and everyone around us. (Not me; I’m tough, I’m the only one not like that.)

Even my father and mother. They had nothing, they knew nothing. But my mother wanted me to be a doctor. We stood on the tenement roof. I carried the basket of clothes up for her to hang. Her eyes came straight out of history, deep eyes of Rachel and Sarah. She was younger than I am now, and she seemed so old. Their hard, hard lives. Sleeping in the dark cubby back of the store. Worried about what they’d have to put on the table: water in the child’s milk again? Oh, God, to live like that!

And yet, how simple! Only one worry: money. They wouldn’t believe it, if they could come back to see what people worry about now. Iris and all that child psychology, sibling rivalries, permissive schools, progressive camps. What poppycock, nothing to worry about at all.

A good thing she’s gone back to teaching. I didn’t think so at first, don’t believe a woman should work if she doesn’t have to. Seemed to me it might look as if Theo couldn’t support his family. But it’s really worked out all right. Iris looks as if she’s doing what she wants to do. She acts more—important. Even wants to go on for a master’s in special education. Guess she got restless with the usual suburban business, P.T.A., scouts, dentist, dancing classes. Always was a bright girl, Iris.

“You want me, Celeste?”

“I’ve brought these.” Another pot of chrysanthemums. “Here’s the card.”

“Where’re we going to put them all? There’s no room for them here.” Besides, the damned room looked like a funeral parlor with the flowers and potted plants, and those
piles of get-well cards to be acknowledged! He’d gotten so much stuff, books and brandy and letters, even a letter from Ruth. Well over eighty now, she was. Her crabbed hand, the letters sliding downward off the page: “Dear Old Friend, We all love you.”

She loves me. But I didn’t help Solly. I let him die … 
.

Celeste was waiting. “I’ll take it downstairs and let Mrs. Friedman put it someplace. You’re feeling all right, Mr. Friedman?”

Always looked so scared, Celeste did, opening the door by inches as if she expected to find him lying dead on the floor.… Made you cranky, a scared face like that. And then ashamed of himself, he said heartily, “I ought to be sick more often, I get so much attention!”

“Oh, don’t do that. Well take good care of you without your being sick.”

“I know you will, Celeste, I know you will.”

“Would you like a cup of tea or anything?”

“Thanks, I’ll take my tea when my wife comes home.”

“She’ll be back soon. Want the door closed?”

“You can leave it open, thanks.”

Good to hear the sounds of the house, Celeste talking to the day worker downstairs. Good woman, Celeste. Member of the family. Steve ought to talk to
her
, ask
her
what she thinks! She’d tell him she had it pretty good! Beautiful room. TV set to herself. Paid vacation. The best food, all she wanted to eat. Steve ought.

Anna should be here soon. He’d made her go to the luncheon of the Hospital Guild. She hadn’t wanted to leave him but she hadn’t been out of the house in weeks now, since his attack. Do her good. Looked fine when she left. She dressed well, Anna did, and it wasn’t just the expense; you had to know what you were doing. Some of the richest men’s wives looked awful. “Clothes, where are you going with the woman?” That’s the way they looked, with their hair puffed out like watermelons and all the dangling bracelets. Gaudy and vulgar, they were. Anna’s taste had taught him that.

She had taught him many, many things. Everything good in his life had come from her, all charm and fragrance, all gentleness and joy. Maury and Eric had come from her. And Iris—

He frowned, winced. That ugly, insane flash of thought again! He was so certain he had wiped it from his mind, but here it was back, like a stain that can’t be got rid of.