Sammy had that old picture of his father in uniform from the First World War. He was a funny-looking young guy, like all those soldiers then, in a helmet that looked too big for his small head, and with a gas mask and a canteen on his belt. Old Jacob Singer had come to this country to get away from the armies over there, and here he was back in one. His eyes were kind and smiling and they looked into yours. Sammy doesn't always meet your eye. When we were younger and started with the kissing games, we had to tell him to look right at the girl he was holding and hugging, instead of off to the side. Sammy at sixty-eight is already older than his father was when he died. I already know I'm not going to live as long as mine did.
Sammy and I lived on different blocks and our parents never met. Except for relatives who lived somewhere else and came on summer weekends for a day at the beach, none of us ever invited other families in for dinner or lunch.
My old man was not especially friendly to anyone outside the family, and friends like Sammy and Winkler were not all that comfortable when they came to my house and he was home. I was the favorite he had in mind to run the business when he grew too old and see to it that there was always a livelihood for him and for all of the brothers and sisters and their children who needed it and couldn't find anything else. The Rabinowitzes were close. Always I was the best outside man there too, the talker, the schmeichler, the salesman, the schmoozer, the easygoing guy who would go to one old building after another to butter up some poor wretch of a janitor who was shoveling coal into a cellar furnace or rolling out garbage cans and ask him politely if he was the "superintendent" or the "manager." I wanted to talk to the "gentleman" who was in charge and would hint at all the ways we could help each other. I would leave him a business card Winkler had made up for me cheap through a printer he knew, and try to establish a contact with him that could lead to our getting the old pipes and the old plumbing fixtures like sinks and toilet bowls and bathtubs and the broken steam and hot-water boilers in the house, sometimes even before they were broken. We knew people who could fix anything. If it couldn't be fixed, we could sell it for junk. There would always be junk, my father would promise us like an optimist, while Claire and I would try not to smile, and always someone to pay you to take it and pay you to sell it. He made sure to talk to both of us when he talked about money after I was back. Now that I was not a child, he would raise me to sixty dollars a week, almost double. And to sixty-five a week after we were married. And of course we could have the top-floor apartment until we could afford something of our own.
"Listen, Morris, listen to me good," I told him when he finished. I had almost four thousand in the bank from my gambling and army pay. "I will do better for you. And sometime you will do better for me. I will give you a year free. But after one year, I will decide my salary. And I will be the one to say where, when, and how I want to work."
"Free?"
That was okay with him. From that came the move after a while into the old mousetrap factory in Orange Valley, New York, and the idea of selling used building materials and plumbing fixtures and boilers and hot-water heaters in a place that didn't have much and needed things in a hurry.
Claire was a better driver than any of us--she'd come from upstate and had a license at sixteen--and she drove the truck back and forth into Brooklyn when I was too busy. She was tough and she was smart and could talk fresh when she had to, and she knew how to use her good looks with cops and filling station garages to get help when anything went wrong, without promising anything or putting herself in trouble. I remember the first ad for the local newspaper Sammy helped write that we still laugh over. WE CUT PIPE TO SKETCH.
"What's it mean?" he asked.
"What it says," I told him.
That line brought in more business of all kinds up here than anybody but me would have thought.
From that came the lumberyard and then the plumbing supply company, with the ten-thousand-dollar loan from my father, at good interest. He was worried about his old age, he said. He had a shaking in his head from a small stroke he'd already been through that nobody ever talked about but him.
"Louie, talk to me, tell me good," he would ask me. "Does it look like my head shakes a little, and the hand?"
"No, Pop, no more than mine."
I remember that when my mother's mind was all but gone, she still wanted her hair combed and whitened with rinse and the hairs tweezed from her face. I know that feeling now of wanting to look your best. And for almost thirty years now I try to keep out of sight until I look fine and healthy again.
"You're a good boy, Louie," he said with a kidding disgust. "You're a liar, like always, but I like you anyway."
We rented a house in our new community and had two kids, then bought a house and had a third, and then I built a house to sell and built some more, one at a time, with partners on the first few, and they did sell, for profit. Profit was always the motive. I found myself lunching and drinking with people who hunted and voted Republican, mainly, and who flew the flag on national holidays and felt they were serving the country by doing that. They put out yellow ribbons each time the White House went to war and acted like military heroes who were fighting it. Why yellow, I would jolly them, the national color of cowardice? But they had a volunteer fire department that was always on the spot and an emergency ambulance service I had to use the second time I got nauseous suddenly and lost all my strength and Claire panicked and rushed me into the hospital. That time they transferred me back to the hospital in Manhattan with Dennis Teemer, who fixed me up again and sent me home when I was back to normal. I joined the American Legion when we first moved up here, to make some friends and have a place to go. They taught me to hunt, and I liked doing that and liked the people I went with, felt beautiful when I hit. They cheered me whenever I brought down a goose and one time a deer. They had to gut it for me. I couldn't even watch. "It's the Christian thing to do," I'd say, and we'd all laugh. When I took my first son out, it was always with other people so there'd be someone to do that for us. He wasn't crazy about hunting and soon I stopped going too.
Next we got the golf club in a town nearby. I made more friends, a lot from the city who moved up out here to the distant suburbs, and we had different places to go and ate and drank with other married couples.
I learned more about banks, and bankers too. At the beginning they let us know, even the women who were tellers, that they didn't much like having to serve customers with names like Rabinowitz. That changed, I admit. But I didn't. They got used to me and a lot of others, as the area kept growing. They thought more of me when I borrowed than when I put money in. When I put money in I was only another hardworking guy struggling with a small business. When I was big enough to borrow, I turned into Mr. Rabinowitz, then Lew to the officers, to Mr. Clinton and Mr. Hardy--a client, of means and net worth--and I would bring them as guests to my golf club as soon as I got in and introduce them as Ed Clinton and Harry Hardy, my bankers, and they were so tickled they blushed. I found out about bankruptcies. I couldn't believe those laws the first time I found myself being screwed by them.
I found out about Chapter 11 from a builder named Hanson and his lawyer, and they found out about me. When they left his house at the start of a business day, I was out of my car while they were still on the porch.
"Lew?" Hanson was so surprised he actually smiled, until he saw I didn't. He was a tall man and he had his hair cut close to the ears in the kind of haircut we had to wear in the army, and I didn't like it even then. The one with him was a stranger. "How are you?"
"Hanson, you owe me forty-two hundred dollars," I said right off. "For lumber and shingles and toilet and kitchen fixtures and pipes. I've sent you bills and talked to you on the telephone, and now I'm telling you to your face I want it today, this morning. Now. I'm here to collect."
"Lew, this is my new lawyer. This one is Rabinowitz."
"Ah, yes," said the new lawyer, with the kind of a smile you always see on lawyers that makes them look
like hypocrites you want to strangle on the spot. "My client is in Chapter 11, Mr. Rabinowitz. I think you know that."
"Tell your client--sir, what is your name? I don't think he gave it."
"Brewster. Leonard Brewster."
"Please advise your client, Brewster, that Chapter 11 is for him and his lawyers, and for the court and maybe for the other people he owes. It's not for me. It's not for Rabinowitz. Hanson, we made a bargain, you and me. You took my material, you used it, you didn't complain about the delivery or quality. Now you must pay for it. That's the way I work. Listen to me good. I want my money."
"You can't collect it, Mr. Rabinowitz," said Brewster, "except through the court. Let me explain."
"Hanson, I can collect it."
"Lew--" Hanson began.
"Explain to your lawyer that I can collect it. I don't have time for court. I can collect it through the pores of your skin if I have to, one drop at a time, if you make me. You're keeping your house? Not with my forty-two hundred. It will go out from under you brick by brick. Are you listening good?"
"Lenny, let me talk to you inside."
When they came out, Brewster spoke with his eyes down.
"You'll have to take it in cash," he told me under his breath. "We can't leave a record."
"I think I can do that."
I trusted banks a little better now, but not that much, and I put the money in a safe-deposit box, because I didn't ever want to have to trust my accountant either. Claire looked faint when I said where I'd been.
"You didn't know they would pay."
"If I didn't know, I would not have gone. I don't waste time. Don't ask me how I know. People do what I want them to. Haven't you noticed? Didn't you? Next--what about Mehlman, that gonif, as long as this is pay-up day?"
"The same story."
"Call him. I'll talk to him too."
"How much should I ask him for?"
"How much is six times seven?"
"Don't confuse me. Does he still get the discount?"
"Would you know how to figure it?"
"Does he pay interest or not? That's all I want from you! Don't put me back in school again."
Claire didn't care for deadbeats and chiselers either, no matter what their religion, any more than I did back in the days when we were working very hard and she would help out on the phone when the lumberyard was still small and she wasn't busy getting the kids off to school or rushing home to be there when they got back. Later on, when she had more time and we had more money, she had a piece of an art gallery up here that wasn't supposed to make money and didn't, and after that even a half share of an art school in Lucca in Italy I bought her to help give her something else to think about when there wasn't always that much good anymore to think about here. When Mehlman called back, I grabbed the phone from her. She was too polite, like we were the ones who were supposed to apologize.
"Mehlman, you are a liar," I began right in, without even knowing what he'd been saying. "Listen to me good. If you force me to prove it you will hang yourself, because you'll have nowhere left to turn and no lies left to tell, and I will make you ashamed. Mehlman, I know you are a very religious man, so I'll put the matter to you in religious terms. If I don't have the money in my hands by Thursday noon, this shabbos you will crawl to shul on your knees, and everyone in the temple will know that Rabinowitz broke your legs because he says you are a liar and a cheat."
I didn't know if Mehlman was lying or not. But the money was mine, and I got it.
Of course, later on I had a much more lenient view of Chapter 11 when I finally had to go into bankruptcy myself, but none of the creditors were people. They were only corporations. People were proud of me and clapped me on the back.
By then I was older and had this ailment slowing me down. I had less pep and not much reason for keeping up with newcomers who were younger and hungrier and willing to work as hard as we used to want to. I would have liked to hold on to the lumberyard and the plumbing business to pass on to the children if they wanted to keep it or sell if they didn't. We both felt the cost was too high and it was not worth the risk.
By then the cat was out of the bag. My disease was an open secret in the family. The children knew but didn't know what to make of it, and three of them weren't so small anymore. For a while they must have thought I didn't know. It was a couple of days before even Claire could look me in the eye and tell me what I already knew and did not want her to find out, that I had this disease called Hodgkin's disease, and that it was serious. I didn't know how she would take it. I didn't know how I could take it, having her see me ailing and weak.
I've lasted longer than anyone thought I would. I count. I divide my life into seven-year stretches since.
"You listen to me now," I told her that first week in the hospital up here. "I don't want anyone to know."
"You think I do?"
"We'll make something up."
By the time we let the business go and stuck only to our land and building, it was out of the bag everywhere and we could finally stop pretending to everyone that I had angina pectoris, which often laid me up and made me want to vomit, or relapsing mononucleosis, which did the same, or a nuisance of a minor inflammation I thought up and decided to call tuberculosis of the small glands that left those small scars and blue burn marks on the neck and lips and chest when treated. My muscles came back fast, and so did my appetite. Between spells I kept myself overweight just in case, and I still looked large.
"Okay, Emil, no more kid stuff," I'd said to my doctor in the hospital after the tests, when I saw his laugh was false. He was swallowing a lot and clearing his throat. If I shook his hand I knew it would be limp. "Listen to me good, Emil. It wasn't green apples like I told you, because I don't eat green apples, and I don't even know what they taste like anymore. My neck is swollen and hurts. If it's not an allergy, and you won't say it was food poisoning, then it's got to be something else, doesn't it?"
"Hodgkin's disease," said Emil, and that's the last time in twenty-eight years anyone spoke of it to me by name. "It's what it's called," Emil added.
"Cancer?" It was hard for me to speak that word too. "It's what we're all afraid of."
"It's a form of that."
"I was afraid it was leukemia."
"No, it's not leukemia."
"I don't know the symptoms, but I was afraid it was that. Emil, I don't want to hear it, but I guess I have to. How much time do I have? No lies, Emil, not yet."
Emil looked more relaxed. "Maybe a lot. I don't want to guess. A lot depends on the biology of the individual."
"I don't know what that means," I told him.
"They're your cells, Lew. We can't always tell how they're going to behave. A lot depends on you. How much can you take? How strong is your resistance?"
I'd been holding him by the forearm without realizing it, and I squeezed good-naturedly until he turned a little pale. I laughed a little when I set him free. I was still very strong. "The best you'll ever meet, Emil."
"Then, Lew, you might be okay for a long, long while yet. And feel good most of the time."
"I think that's what I'm going to do," I informed him, as though making a business decision. "Now, don't tell Claire. I don't want her to know what it is."
"She knows, Lew. You're both adults. She didn't want you to know."
"Then don't tell her you told me. I want to watch how she lies."
"Lew, will you grow up? This thing is no joke."
"Don't I know it?"
Emil took off his glasses. "Lew, there's a man in New York I want you to see. His name is Teemer, Dennis Teemer. You'll go into his hospital there. He knows more about this than anybody here."
"I won't want an ambulance."
We went down by limo, in a pearl-gray stretch limousine with black windows that allowed us to see out but nobody to see in, with me stretched out in back in a space big enough to hold a coffin, maybe two.
"We sometimes use it for that," said the driver
, who'd told us he was from Venice and the brother of a gondolier there. "The seats go flat and the back opens."
Claire left him a very big tip. We always tip big, but this time it was for luck.
Teemer had his office on Fifth Avenue across from the Metropolitan Museum and a waiting room of quiet patients. Down the block on the way uptown to his hospital was the Frank Campbell Funeral Home--a "home," they called it--and I made jokes to myself about the convenient location. Now when I hear about those big society parties they have at the museum and places like that, I get the feeling I'm upside down in a world that's turned topsy-turvy. There are big new buildings in the city that I don't even recognize. There are new multimillionaires where there used to be Rockefellers and J. P. Morgans, and I don't know where they came from or what they're doing.
After that first time in Dr. Teemer's office, I never let Claire walk inside there with me again. She would cross into the museum and I would meet her when I was finished and we'd look at pictures if she still wanted to and then go off for lunch somewhere and go home. In that waiting room there is no one ever laughing, and I am never in a mood myself to try to get anything jolly going there. Teemer himself is still a skinny little guy with a gloomy manner, and when he does cheer me up, he does it in a way that always leaves me cranky.
"You might be interested to know, Mr. Rabinowitz," he began when we met, "that we no longer think of it as incurable."
All at once I felt very much better. "I'll strangle Emil. He didn't tell me that."
"He doesn't always know."
"So there is a cure? Huh?"
Teemer shook his head, and my breath caught. "No, I wouldn't put it that way. We don't think of it as a cure."
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