Prayers for the Living (49 page)

“M
OTHER
,
ARE YOU
. . . ?”

“I'll get a . . .”—Peale was rising.

But a knock at the door interrupted her.

You want adventure? You want to see what happened next? I'm telling you, I'll give you adventure, as if adventure is not my heart like it's beating now, thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-thump, thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-thump! family life! that's adventure! Go join a war, start a fire, build a city—the boredom sets in very
soon
. But raise children, watch them grow, and you'll know horror and love and fear and worry, you'll learn real pain and your wounds may never heal. In an accident you only die once, but in a family you go on living. Didn't I? Didn't most of us?

Peale went to the door, and the policemen, after muttering a few words, pushed their way in. Behind them came the two men in suits who immediately began reading to them from a little card. Maby burst into tears. Sadie started swearing. Peale, her eyes full of fire, made her big mistake. She picked up the knife.

The next thing she knew she was falling back against the kitchen counter, the victim of a very big swing of a fist by one of the police.
Later, when she sued, this was a big thing, the punch. But everyone in the room saw the knife in her hand, and that made all the difference. They had so much on her at that point it nearly didn't matter about the attempt with the knife, if it was an attempt at all. They had Maby in the house and the dope on the table, if they wanted to use this against her. Later, sad woman, Peale probably wished that she had plunged the blade into her own chest.

“Aw right, ladies.” The men said this a lot of times before emptying the room. Sadie and her mother they took to the office, where the campus police called Manny, who was waiting at the airport. The two men in suits escorted Peale into another room and talked to her for a while.

“We took my mother on a picnic, that's all,” Sadie told them over and over.

“Some picnic, some picnic,” the men said over and over. That's what I say too. It ended with the painter woman out of her job, back in New York and ready to kill, really. And Maby, very upset, back in Owl Valley. And Sadie, what was with her? She stayed in school, behaving as though she had made a silly error. As though wanting her teacher and girlfriend, Peale, and her mother, Maby, living together with her in a little house on the campus might have been all she was looking toward. As though she had not hoped that her action would in a brief terrific burst of emotion take her father's heart and sear it like meat on a fire and shrivel it into dried leathery tissue. Now that my Manny—though it was Mord who called the New York police, he was acting for my Manny, and so it all turns out to be the same, doesn't it?—now that Manny had blocked her game, not even knowing, of course, that it was a game, a dangerous kind of play but a game nevertheless, she turned quite serious, keeping her lips buttoned tight, but planning all the while when the time and place and scheme seemed right to take her revenge against her father not only for his inability to help her in her hour of need after the mess at Rutgers, and not only for forcing her mother out of the house and into the hospital—because she did place the blame squarely on him, and who wouldn't, if she had no sense of how life was as much to blame as the people who lived
it?—but now, on top of these old scores, she added the new grudge of vengeance, the charge of taking her friend's life, the life of Peale the painter, spreading it across his knee, and breaking it in two.

The funny thing was, although she still believed that she was fighting on, in part, to defend the wrong that he had done against her friend the teacher-painter, she became distracted from the woman herself. Now that the woman was in a way broken, Sadie often turned to other people for amusement. For instance, and this is not just a for instance but I'm just saying it that way,
for instance,
as if it just happened one among many because I don't want to sound like the trumpets and kettle drums at the beginning of the last movement of a symphony,
for instance,
she joined in a campaign that was growing in the city on the part of the group of crazy children called Jews for Justice.

H
ER FATHER WAS
writing a speech.

After all had seemed to have been said and done on the subject of Sadie's escapade with her mother, after Maby was back in Owl Valley more miserable and stranger than ever, after Peale was back in New York, out of a job, and smoking so much of that stuff that her head was always filled up with the fog of illusions, and after Sadie pretended to settle back with her schoolwork and take up working with clay—and this is important, the part where the outside world begins to break in on the solitude of the immediate family—after my Manny's takeover of the Boston company became real, he was writing a speech.

He had, you see, his own illusions and delusions, and these were just as bad as those that appeared in the mind of Peale the painter born out of the smoke of that weed, or worse, because they came to him while he was supposedly sane and sober, alert and alive in the middle of the day.

His first delusion, of course, was that his daughter had settled back in school, while in fact she was merely biding her time. The first
private delusion then. You got that one? And the second? It seems to be, to me to be, both private and public. Manny, my little boy from the old days, he's grown so wise and distinguished, and he's made such a success in taking over one of the oldest companies on the East Coast, that's suddenly convinced him that he can do something more than merely be big business. From rabbi to big business to what? He's on the verge, in his mind having already crossed over the line, of stepping into yet another walk of life—diplomacy.

Oi, oi, oi,
my Manny, my Manny, from where did all these dreams and fantasies speed out to you? the talking bird? the delusions in the mind? Listen: he had a lot of things going for him—he had, maybe, too much going for him, and so he got carried away. But the fact is he grew and grew, slipping out of one life like a snake from its skin and taking on another, and there he was getting ready to change himself once again, when it all came down on his head.

This is how.

Rick Sommer, that darling grandson of our Mrs. Pinsker, the youth leader who became an assistant dean at Rutgers, he renewed his acquaintance with his old employer when they had to take care of the business of Sadie at the fraternity house.

What could he say at first? He was sorry, very sorry, that any of it took place. And since the former rabbi wanted to keep things quiet he was well pleased to do the same. After some appropriate punishment for the boys involved, of course. All of them were suspended and the fraternity was put on social probation—no parties—for a semester. A few of the boys in the group, none of those directly involved, grumbled a little, but compared to the possibility of a trial for their brothers, they had to admit the punishment wasn't so bad.

So here is this boy become a dean, one actor in the next-to-last act of this play. A minor actor, like the taxi, like the fire truck, but an important one nonetheless. Him I can see with my eyes closed, a light-haired fellow, handsome, he doesn't look very . . . you know, blue eyes, neat suits, a nice smile. Who knows what he was doing in his life except studying since he worked as a youth leader, and remember the Purim dance? Maybe he's engaged to a
nice Jewish girl—to a law student or a doctor, maybe. And he's the kind of fellow who's very unhappy with the way he had to fix the problem with Sadie, unhappy for everybody all around. Unhappy with what happened to her, unhappy that the boys did this, unhappy with having to punish. College is paradise and he hates to play the snake. And in his cheerful thoughts a few years later he gets an idea, he's been reading the business section of the
Times,
following my Manny's progress with the growing company, with the latest takeover. And the idea he gets, is to have one of the campus organizations invite my Manny to give a talk, and in anticipation of this, Rick Sommer suggests that the school award my Manny an honorary degree. The president, whatever his name, loves the idea, you know, a former rabbi who in his philosophical wisdom becomes a successful East Coast business magnate. What else could better take away the bad taste of the unfortunate incident with Sadie?

And there is another actor involved here, too, a smaller part, I should tell you, but one that makes big waves. Say he's like the horse that drew the milk wagon. A nice-looking boy, a Jewish boy for sure, since what he did was organize . . . But wait, let's just say he's working behind the scenes, and it will come out in a minute when I tell you what he's doing. He could have been—he was a student there—might have been the same boy, remember him? that Sadie met on the street and who gave her directions, him or one of his roommates, why not? He had a plan. So here, listen.

Rick Sommer invited my Manny to give his speech, and Manny was so proud when he got the invitation. Like a little boy again almost he was. This is what I mean. Even at his highest he was never showing off, just feeling good, wanting his mother to know.

“Can you imagine?” he said to me over the telephone just after he got the call. And when he came home, hours and hours later, over the dinner I fixed for him—I sent home the cook and did it all by myself, like the old days—he was still talking like he was a child again, standing on the roof of the old building, looking out across the rooftops toward the uptown, saying to himself, one day
I'm going to own a building like that, like that, the spires in his mind, the glass windows, the towers.

“I have worked hard,” he said.

“Yes, darling.”

“I have worked harder than most men I know.”

“Yes, darling.”

“I studied the Torah as though I had no time left to live.”

“Yes, my darling.”

“And I threw myself into a business I didn't know and learned as much as any human being.”

“You did it, darling.”

“I have led two full lives where most men they don't know what it's like to lead even a full
one
.”

“Yes, you have. But please eat a little, Manny. It's getting cold.” There was a veal chop on a plate, with nice spinach I had cooked. And a salad of lettuce and tomatoes, this we learned to eat over the years. But here is his plate in front of him, his food getting cold, like he was a boy again, and talking about what he wanted, his dreams.

“I helped a few generations of fractured congregations put themselves back together.”

“You did, darling.”

“And I took old man Sporen's business and I have, with of course the enormous assistance of my brother-in-law, parlayed it into a company that has now the largest holdings in a country greater in size than New Jersey.”

“I'm impressed, my darling. I didn't know that—bigger than Jersey? That's big, my darling, that's big.”

“Mother. Mama. I have accomplished many things . . .”

“Yes?”

“. . . but even this last, the putting together of the package, taking over the holdings down there in the country . . .”

“In the country? In Jersey?”

“In that country
down there,
Mama. You know the Panama Canal?”

“Sure, I've heard of it.”

“Near there, Mama.”

“I've heard of it. A big ditch, no?”

“A big ditch, sure. Filled with water from two oceans. After supper I'll show you on a map.”

“I'll look at it, I'll see.”

“I was thinking . . .”

“Yes, darling. Look, there, please eat.”

“I will, Mama. But listen. I was thinking that I would fly down—organize an inspection tour of our new holdings.”

“A good idea. But you should wear short-sleeved shirts because it's probably very hot.”

He laughed. When I realized that I had made my little big Manny smile I laughed myself. Why not?

“I'll remember that, Mama.”

“And you'll get yourself a lighter suit for a change, Manny.”

“I'll think about it, Mama. But what I wanted to tell you . . .”

“You're telling me.”

“I'm telling you, if you'll let me have a word . . .”

“Take four or five.”