Next to Love (30 page)

Jack is intrigued. “When is it all right?”

Al ponders the question. He does not want to visit his past, his heritage, on Jack any more than he does on Millie. He loves their innocence.

“When someone is trying to bully you. Or bully someone else.” He can tell from the way Jack looks at him that he wants more specifics, but Al moves on. “It’s the business of the note you didn’t bring home that bothers me.”

Jack knows if he looks down he is done for. He holds Al’s gaze. “I lost it.”

Al taps his fingers on the Formica tabletop. The explanation is not implausible. A boy’s world is full of lost mittens, balls, magazines, trading cards, and parts for model airplanes, boats, and cars. And the eye contact is reassuring. “You should have told us you lost it.”

Now Jack drops his eyes, a charade of remorse. “I know,” he says, in the sullen mumble that passes for contrition in a ten-year-old boy.

Al starts to say no bike for three days and no movies this Saturday, then softens and settles for only the bike.

“If you ask me,” he says later in the bedroom, as he unknots his tie and pulls it out from under his collar, “the teacher is making a mountain out of a molehill. Boys fight.”

“That’s what I told her,” Millie answers on her way to the bathroom. “She said it’s our job to teach them not to.”

She closes the door behind her, slips a hair band on, and begins creaming her face. Boys fight, and Jack lost the note, and the business about his name was only a joke. That’s why she didn’t mention it to Al.

But later, after he has fallen asleep, she lies in bed thinking about the incident. The house is silent. Beneath the windows, open a crack to the night, rain strums the garage roof. She usually loves lying beside Al in the freshly laundered fragrance of their king-sized bed, thinking of the children dreaming in their rooms. The fleeting sizzle of car tires on wet pavement, like bacon in a skillet, heightens the stillness and sharpens her pleasure. They are warm and dry and safe. But tonight the beat of the rain makes her edgy. At the sound of a car, she holds her breath until it passes.

The business about his name must have been a joke. Jack is too young to understand the implications of Baum. But she has learned. The first time it happened, she was taking Al’s blue pinstripe suit to a new dry cleaner. As she pushed the suit across the counter, the man behind it asked her name. Baum, she said. He looked up from the trousers he was inspecting and asked if the name was German. He was too old to have been in the war, but you never knew. Maybe he had lost a son. She said it was not, though to tell the truth, she is not sure where Al’s people come from. Oh, was all he said. She did not like the way he said it and resolved to go to a different dry cleaner next time, but when she picked up the suit, he had done such a good job that she could not bring herself to change.

She turns on her side and winds herself around Al. He reaches back and pats her bottom. The gesture is instinctive. He is asleep.

She never mentioned the occurrence, or a few others like it, to Al. And when he frets about similar incidents, she pretends not to understand. Like that time he got annoyed because she forgot to ask him for money and Babe had to pay for lunch. She knew perfectly well why he was upset, but there was no point in dwelling on it. People say mixed marriages don’t work, but if you do not make a fuss about the little things, they work just fine. She and Al are proof. That’s why she did not mention Jack’s joke about his name. It has nothing to do with Baum sounding Jewish, but Al might not see it that way, and she has no intention of upsetting him for no reason.

NOVEMBER 1952

“The best part,” Jack says, “is when you see the tank in the sights. Then all of a sudden—pow!—and the whole thing goes up in flames.”

“Nah, the best was the commando raid,” Bobby Summers says, and begins dodging in and out among the boys, rat-tat-tatting with his arm. “All those Krauts they killed. Rat-tat-tat.”

“My dad killed lots of Krauts,” Jack says. “Just like the heroes who broke the back of Rommel’s vaunted Afrika Korps.” He quotes the line on the movie poster, then decides not to stray too far from the truth. “Only he killed them in France. He was in D-Day, and he killed lots and lots and lots of Krauts. He died killing Krauts.”

“Whadya mean?” Billy Craig says. “Your dad didn’t die. My dad says your dad probably wasn’t even in the war. He probably had a cushy desk job. He says Jews always find ways to stay out of the fighting. He knows because he had a Jew guy in his outfit.”

“I mean my real dad,” Jack says.

“Whadya mean your real dad? You only got one dad, and that’s the Jew who wasn’t even in the war. This guy who killed Krauts is just some make-believe guy.”

“Is not.”

“Is so.”

“I got pictures of him.”

“Show me.”

“I don’t carry them around. Even if I did, I wouldn’t show you. You’d get your cooties all over them.”

“Look who’s talking about cooties, Jewboy.”

“I’m not a Jewboy. My real dad was as good as yours.”

“Jewboy.”

“Take that back!”

“Jewboy, Jewboy, Jewboy.”

Billy is still bigger than he is, though not as much as he used to be, but Jack doesn’t care. He lunges and pushes as hard as he can. Billy stumbles into the street, regains his balance, and comes back at Jack. Suddenly Jack is on his back in the dirt, and Billy is straddling him with his big meaty legs and pummeling him with his fists. Jack tastes the blood and swings back, but Billy fends him off. He tries to push Billy, but it’s like having an elephant sitting on him. He manages to get his right hand free and swings again. It hits Billy in the nose.

“Fucking Jewboy,” Billy howls, and lands another punch to Jack’s eye.

The other guys pull Billy off him.

Jack does not want to get up. He wants to turn over on his stomach, lie there in the dirt, and cry, but he knows he has to stand. He manages to prop himself up on his hands and knees, then gets to his feet. He has a mouthful of blood from his nose, and his eye hurts, but Billy’s nose is bleeding too. He wishes his dad, his real dad, Pete Swallow, could see that.

MILLIE ALMOST DROPS
the laundry basket when she sees Jack standing in the doorway. His face is encrusted with dirt and blood, and his hair is standing up like a madman’s, and his dungarees are torn. Her body cringes in referred pain, like the men she has read about who have physical symptoms when their wives go into labor. The years they spent alone together, waiting for Pete, grieving for Pete, have left her too exquisitely attuned to Jack.

He is trying not to cry, but when he sees Millie, his face collapses and his chest begins to heave.

She does not ask what happened. She knows. She puts down the basket of laundry, takes his hand, and leads him up the two short flights from the family room to the children’s bathroom. The girls, who spotted him across the yard and came running, start to follow, but she tells them to stay where they are.

She takes him into the bathroom, sits him on the closed toilet, and turns him toward the light. The sight makes her bite her lip. She tells him to open his mouth. His teeth are all there.

She takes a washcloth, soaks it in warm water, and begins working on his face. The area below his nose is like a carapace. She goes to the linen closet and gets a fresh washcloth. His crying has turned to a series of shudders.

She unbuttons his shirt and helps him out of it, then his dungarees. Sitting there in his cotton Jockey shorts, he is a skinny little boy again. He shivers, and she puts a towel around his shoulders while she washes the scraped and skinned areas of his arms and legs.

When she finishes cleaning the abrasions, she takes out the bottle of Merthiolate. He does not cry as she applies it. With each dab, they wince in unison.

As she goes to his bedroom to get a clean pair of pajamas, she hears Al’s car in the driveway, then Betsy and Susan shouting Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, and Jack, and all bloody, and upstairs with Mommy.

He does not pound up the stairs, but he takes them quickly and appears in the bathroom door.

“Are you okay?” he asks Jack.

Jack nods and sniffles.

Al looks at Millie.

“All teeth are present and accounted for. His nose has stopped bleeding. But I wish you’d take a look at that eye.”

Al steps into the bathroom, bends, and examines Jack’s eye. Again, she and Jack wince in unison when Al touches the lid.

He straightens. “You’re going to have a real shiner tomorrow. Know what your line is?”

Jack looks up at him and sniffles.

“You should see the other guy.”

Jack goes on looking up at him.

“It’s a joke.”

Millie puts him to bed. He says he is not hungry, but she brings him a bowl of soup on a tray. She sits on the side of the bed and feeds it to him. She is amazed he lets her.

Al comes into the room while she is spooning the soup into his mouth and stands at the foot of the bed.

“You want to tell us what happened?” His voice is as gentle as his hands when he examined the bruised eye.

Jack shakes his head no.

“Okay, it can wait till tomorrow,” he says, and goes out again.

When Jack finishes the soup, Millie asks him if he wants anything else, and he shakes his head no again. She puts the tray on the floor, leans over him, and brushes the hair back from his forehead. He usually pushes her hand away, but not now. Awful as this is, she likes having her little boy back. Maybe that’s why she goes on.

“We don’t have to talk about it now, but just tell me who you were fighting with.”

He does not answer.

“Billy Craig?”

His nod is almost imperceptible.

“Oh, Jackie, I told you to ignore him. Everyone on the street knows he’s a bully.”

“I tried to, but he kept doing it.”

“Doing what?”

“Calling me names.”

“You’re too old to get angry at that. You know about sticks and stones.”

He does not answer.

“Next time he calls you a name, just walk away.”

“But it wasn’t true.”

“Of course it wasn’t true. No nasty name he calls you could be true.”

“He called me Jewboy.”

She stiffens.

“I’m not, am I?”

She is not sure how to answer. Al adopted him when they married. Does that make him Jewish? They celebrate Christmas and Chanukah. More presents for the kids, Al says. She and the girls color Easter eggs, and they go to Al’s parents for a seder, but the way his father conducts it makes it feel like a big family dinner with presents for the kids when they find the piece of matzo he has hidden. Betsy and Susan were not christened. Al says there is no such thing as a Jewish christening, at least for girls. It’s one of the reasons she’s glad they had girls. Less to worry about with his parents, and, she suspects, with him. Jack was christened, but that was in another life. And one other thing, a fortuitous accident: Thanks to his uncle Mac’s medical advice, Jack was circumcised. Father and son look alike. But that does not make him Jewish.

“Well, am I?”

“No.”

“But Dad is?”

“It’s a long story, and you have to get some sleep.” She stands. “We’ll discuss it some other time.”

“You’re sure I’m not?”

She bends over to hug him. “You’re as Christian as I am. And don’t let Billy Craig or anyone else tell you differently.”

She arranges the pillows behind his head. Only when she turns to leave does she see Al standing in the doorway again.

HE TURNS, GOES BACK
down to the kitchen, and pours himself a drink. Why is he surprised? His parents, his uncle, everyone warned him. One day a word will slip, and you’ll know how she really feels. If he is going to be reasonable about it—and he is trying to be reasonable; he came downstairs and poured a drink to be reasonable—who would choose to be a Jew, or a Negro, when it’s so much easier not to be? Since the war, it’s not as hard as it used to be, but it is still not a piece of cake. For him to deny being Jewish would be shameful. For her to be relieved she is not Jewish is only human nature. Only she was not talking about its being difficult or easy; she was talking about its being not as good as and better than. You’re as Christian as I am.

What does that make me? he wants to storm back upstairs and ask her. What does that make Betsy and Susan, your own daughters?

He does not go back upstairs to confront her. He pours more scotch into his glass and carries it down to the family room, where the girls are watching television.

“Make room for Daddy,” he says, and they spring apart on the sofa, then move in beneath the shelter of his spread arms.

After a moment, Betsy wriggles. “Not so tight, Daddy.”

NEITHER OF THEM
mentions the incident during dinner. There is nothing unusual about that. Both girls are chatterboxes. A chip off their mother, Al sometimes teases her, though he does not tease her tonight. Nor does he sit at the kitchen table with the evening paper to keep her company while she does the dishes. He takes it down to the family room.

She clears the table and begins putting the leftover meat loaf and potatoes and string beans into plastic containers.

The children are where they hurt you. She does not mind the tradesmen who look funny at the mention of her name, or the invitation to join the ladies’ historical society that never came, or even the way her aunt and uncle watch their words around her. Well they might, she thinks, when she remembers a joke—it was supposed to be a joke—her uncle used to tell before America got into the war. I pray to heaven the English will stop Hitler, he used to say, but not too soon. She can take the slurs and slights and innuendos, but she will not let them be visited on Jack.

She puts the plates in the sink, pulls on her rubber gloves, and begins rinsing and stacking them in the dishwasher. She wonders if Al is waiting for an apology. What can she apologize for—telling Jack he is Christian? She just wishes she hadn’t said, as Christian as I am. Somehow that makes it worse, though she is not sure why.

She puts the last plate in the dishwasher, closes it, and straightens. This is ridiculous. She is doing what she has sworn she will not, making mountains out of molehills. For all she knows, Al did not even hear what she said. He was silent during dinner because something happened at the office. It would not be the first time he brought his business worries home.