The Rabbi (47 page)

“He's not ugly at all,” Michael said in amazement one evening, giving his wife a headache.

The Plymouth eventually was found with the help of the San Francisco Police Department, parked where they had abandoned it. Only the hubcaps were missing. Their cost, and the fifteen-dollar fine which Michael had to pay three days later for parking
in a forbidden area (taxi stand), he wrote off cheerfully as birthing expenses.

Abe and Dorothy Kind could not come to California in time to see their new grandson circumcised. But if they missed the
bris
they did not miss the
pidyon haben
. Dorothy refused to fly. They took a compartment on the City of San Francisco. For three nights and two days Dorothy knitted her way across the country. Three sets of booties and a little cap. Abe read magazines, he drank Scotch, he discussed life and politics with a freckled Pullman porter named Oscar Browning, and as a student of human behavior he watched with interest and admiration the progress of an Air Force corporal who two hours out of New York sat next to a haughty blonde in the dining car and was sharing her compartment when the train pulled into San Francisco.

Dorothy was ecstatic when she saw her grandson. “He looks like a little movie star,” she said.

“He's got ears like Clark Gable,” Abe agreed. The grandfather took over the job of bubbling Max after each feeding, carefully spreading a clean diaper over his shoulder and back to protect himself from spit-up, and invariably ending up with a wide wet splotch on his sleeve in the area of the elbow. “
Pisherkeh,
” he called the baby, a name spoken in equal parts of love and outrage.

He and Dorothy stayed in California ten days. They attended two Friday-evening services at the temple, sitting stiffly with their daughter-in-law between them, the three of them pretending that the empty seats around them did not exist. “He should have been a radio announcer,” Abe whispered to Leslie after the first sermon.

On the evening before their return to New York, Michael and his father went for a walk. “Come, Dorothy?” Abe asked.

“No, you go. I'll stay with Leslie and Max,” she said, her hand fluttering at her chest.

“What's the matter?” he said, frowning. “The same business? You want me to call a doctor?”

“I don't need a doctor,” she said. “Go, go.”

“What same business?” Michael asked when they were out on the street. “Has she been unwell?”

“
Ah
.” Abe sighed. “She
kvetches
. I
kvetch
. Our friends
kvetch
. You know what it is? We're growing old.”

“We're all growing older,” Michael said uncomfortably. “But you and Momma aren't old. I'll bet you still lift weights in your bedroom. Don't you?”

“I lift,” Abe admitted, smacking his flat belly with his hand.

“It's been nice having you here, Pop,” Michael said. “I hate to see you go back. We don't see each other enough.”

“We'll see you more from now on,” Abe said. “I'm selling the business.”

He was more surprised than he had a right to be. “Why, that's great,” he said. “What will you do?”

“Travel. Enjoy life. Give your mother some pleasure.” Abe was silent for a moment. “You know, our marriage was one of those late-starters. It took us a long time to really appreciate one another.” He shrugged. “Now I want her to enjoy herself. Florida in the winter. In the summer, we'll visit a few weeks with you kids. Every couple of years a trip to Israel to see Ruthie, the damn Arabs should only let us.”

“Who's buying Kind Foundations?”

“Two of the big outfits have made me offers in the last couple of years. I'll sell to the highest bidder.”

“I'm glad for you,” Michael said. “It sounds perfect.”

“I figured it out so it would be,” Abe said. “Just don't tell your mother. I want it to be a surprise.”

In the morning there was an argument about whether Michael should take them to the train. “I don't like long goodbys in a railroad station,” Dorothy said. “Kiss me here like a good son and let us take a cab like sensible people.”

But Michael overruled her. He drove them to the station and bought magazines and cigars for his father and a box of candy for his mother. “Oy, I can't even eat it,” she said. “I'm on a diet.” She gave him a little push. “You go home now,” she said. “Or to your temple. Get out of here.” He looked at her and decided it would be better to do as she said.

“Good-by, Momma. Pop,” he said, kissing them both on the cheek. He walked away quickly.

“Why did you do that?” Abe asked, annoyed. “He could have stayed with us another ten-fifteen minutes.”

“Because I didn't want to start crying in a railroad station, that's why,” she said, starting to cry.

She was better by the time they boarded the train. She knitted, saying little, until it was lunchtime. On the way to the diner Abe saw that Oscar Browning, the porter with freckles, was on board, too.

“Hello, Mr. Kind,” the porter said. “Glad to have you returning with us.”

“How much did you tip that man on the way out?” Dorothy asked when they reached the next car.

“No more than usual.”

“So how come he remembers you?”

“We had a long conversation on the way out. He's a smart man.”

“He sure is,” she said.

In the diner he ordered a steak and a bottle of beer. Dorothy ordered only tea and toast.

“What's the matter?” he asked.

She closed her eyes. There was a white line around her mouth. “I feel
nisht gut
. Nauseous. It's this train. It keeps going from side to side.”

“I told you we should fly,” he said. He watched her tensely. In a little while the white line disappeared and the color came back. “Are you all right?”

“I'll all right.” She smiled at him and patted his hand. The waiter came and left their food and she watched him eating. “Now I'm getting hungry,” she said.

“Want a steak?” he asked, relieved. “Or some of this one?”

“No,” she said. “Order me some strawberries, will you?” He did and they came as he was finishing his sirloin.

“I always think of that market basket and the ball of twine when I see you eating strawberries,” he said.

“Remember, Abe?” she said. “You were courting me and we used to go out all the time with that Helen Cohen, who lived next door and her boy friend, what was his name?”

“Pulda. Herman Pulda.”

“That's right, Pulda. They used to call him Herky. They broke up later and he went into the meat business on Sixteenth Avenue and Fifty-Fourth Street. Non-kosher. But every night
the two of you would bring us a bag of fruit, not only strawberries, but bing cherries, peaches, pears, pineapples, every night something different. And you'd whistle, and we'd lower the basket on the twine from the third-floor window. Oy, my heart would thump.”

“Your bedroom window.”

“Sometime's Helen's. She was a pretty girl. Stunning.”

“Couldn't compare with you. Not even today.”

“Yeh. Just look at me.” She sighed. “It seems like yesterday, but look at me, hair all gray, four times a grandmother.”

“Beautiful.” Under the table he squeezed her
polkeh
. “You're a very beautiful woman.”

“Stop it,” she said, but he saw that she wasn't mad and he gave her leg another squeeze before he took his hand away.

After lunch they played gin rummy until she began to yawn. “You know what I'd like?” she said. “I'd like to take a nap.”

“So, take a nap,” he said.

She kicked off her shoes and lay down on the seat. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I'll have Oscar make up the berth.”

“I don't need it,” she said. “You'll have to tip him.”

“I'll tip him anyway,” he said, annoyed.

She took two Bufferin tablets and after Oscar made the berth she took off her dress and her girdle and got under the covers in her slip and slept until last call for dinner, when he woke her as gently as he knew how. The nap had rested her and she was hungry. At dinner she ordered fried chicken and apple pie and coffee. That night, however, she tossed and turned, keeping him awake as well.

“What's the matter?” he asked her.

“I shouldn't eat fried foods. I have a heartburn,” she said. He got up and gave her an Alka Seltzer. By morning she felt better. They went to the dining car very early and had juice and black coffee and then they went back to the compartment and Dorothy picked up her knitting again. It was attached to a tremendous ball of blue yarn.

“What are you making now?” he asked.

“Afghan, for Max.”

He tried to read while she knitted but he wasn't a great reader to begin with and he was tired of reading. After a time
he took a walk through the swaying train, ending in the men's lounge where Oscar Browning was stacking towels and counting small bars of soap.

“Won't be long before we reach Chicago, will it?” he asked as he sat down near the porter.

“'Bout two hours now, Mr. Kind.”

“I used to sell that town years ago,” he said. “Marshal Field. Carson, Pirie and Scott. Goldblatt's. That's quite a town.”

“Yes, sir,” the porter said. “I live there.”

“Do you?” Abe said. He thought for a while. “Any kids?”

“Four.”

“Must be hard, traveling all the time.”

“It ain't easy,” the porter said. “But when I get home, Chicago is it.”

“Why don't you get a job in Chicago?”

“Railroad pays me more loot than I could earn in Chicago. I'd rather come home to those four kids once in a while with money for new shoes than see 'em every day with no money for new shoes. Make sense?”

“It makes sense,” Abe said. They both grinned. “You must see a lot of life on this job,” Abe said. “Men and women stuff.”

“To some people, travelin' makes 'em itchy down there. An' a train is worse than a ship. There's not much else to do.” For a while they told each other stories, corset stories and railroad stories. Then Oscar ran out of towels and soap and Abe went back to the compartment.

The ball of blue yarn had rolled all the way to the door when it had dropped from her lap. “Dorothy?” he said. He picked it up and carried it to her. “Dorothy,” he said again, shaking her, but he knew right away, and he leaned down hard on the button summoning the porter. She would have looked asleep except that her eyes were open. They looked sightlessly at the blank green wall straight ahead.

Oscar came through the open door.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Kind?” he said. He stared for a moment. “Our merciful Lord Jesus,” he said softly.

Abe put the ball of yarn in her lap.

“Mr. Kind,” Oscar said. “You better sit down, sir.” He took Abe's elbow but Abe shook off his hand.

“I'll go find a doctor,” the porter said uncertainly.

Abe listened to him move away and then he dropped to his knees. Through the carpet on the floor he could feel the vibration of the tracks and the straining and the swaying of the train. He picked up her hand and held it against his wet cheek.

“I'm going to retire, Dorothy,” he said.

 

35

Ruthie arrived ten hours too late for the funeral. They were sitting on stools in the Kind living room when the doorbell rang and she let herself in and walked over and put her arms around Abe, who began to shake with deep, gasping sobs.

“I don't know why I rang the bell,” she said, and then she began to weep, quietly, her head twisting from side to side on her father's shoulder.

When things had quieted down she kissed her brother and Michael introduced Leslie. “How's your family?” he asked.

“Fine.” She blew her nose and looked around. All the mirrors had been shrouded at Abe's request, despite Michael's insistence that this was not necessary. “It's over, isn't it?”

Michael nodded. “This morning. I'll take you out there tomorrow.”

“All right.” Her eyes were puffed and reddened from weeping. She was deeply tanned and there was gray in her black hair. The combination of dark tan and graying hair was very attractive, but she was overweight, with more than a suggestion of double chin. And her legs had thickened. She was no longer his sleek American sister, he saw with dismay.

People began to arrive.

By eight o'clock the apartment was filled. The women covered the table with things to eat. Michael started to go into his old bedroom to get cigarettes and two of his father's customers were sitting on the brass bed with their backs to the door, drinking Scotch.

“A rabbi and he married a
shickseh
. Can you tie that one?”

“My God, what a combination.”

He closed the door softly and went back to sit next to Leslie and hold her hand.