112
"What kind of job you getting?"
"I really can't tell you yet. You wouldn't like it anyway."
"Of course not."
"So let's talk about something else."
"Sure," Sid said. "Let's talk about vultures."
Gold's face froze. "Why?"
"They're like the lilies of the field."
"Sid, you bastard—"
"Apologize!" screamed his father, snapping erect. "Apologize, you bastard, for that filthy word you just said."
Gold walked into the kitchen.
Rose was bawling again. "I can't help it," she explained to Ida. "It's the first party I ever had."
"Rose, what do you mean?" Ida said. "We were always having birthday and Christmas parties."
"Even I had them," Gold recollected.
"I was the one who made them," Rose exclaimed joyously, with another outburst of tears.
Esther nodded. "Poppa was always busy and Momma was always working and sick a lot. So Rose was the one who made the parties."
"And Esther helped," said Rose. "But I never had one for myself."
"I thought it was about time," said Belle, carrying a cup of coffee to Rose. "Happy sixtieth."
Gold had difficulty swallowing. "Rose," he said, clearing his throat, and took coffee for himself. "I'm trying to remember things. Remember the time Sid lost me and you had to come to the police station to get me?"
"Not me. I was selling custard and malteds on the boardwalk. Esther went."
"Boy, was there hollering in the house that night," said Sid, taking, as he entered, a bite-size piece of Danish pastry. "I told them you ran away."
Gold was staggered. "How could you do such a thing?"
"Listen, I was the oldest," laughed Sid. "It wasn't so
113
much fun taking care of all of you. I used to like girls, remember?" He cast a glance backward to assure himself of Harriet's absence.
Ida understood. "I never liked it when I had to take Muriel and Bruce to school."
"I never liked it when I had to take care of Bruce," said Muriel.
And Gold had not enjoyed having to take care of
Joannie.
44You know what they did.for her birthday at the office?" Max said grouchily. "Nothing." ^^~~~
"I don't care." Rose nullified his-grievance with a good-natured toss of her hand. 'They didn't even know. Listen, I'm so old I'm glad they let me stay."
"That's why I'm afraid to go looking for a job," said Esther, and those nerves in her jaw were quivering again, giving to her meticulously clean chin the look of something easily broken.
"Remember how hard it was when we started?" Rose sipped her coffee. "I guess we had lots of fun even then. It took me two years to find a steady job."
"I found one sooner when I got out of high school," said Esther.
"You were so pretty," said Rose. Esther's eyes misted over. "But I was always big as a horse," Rose went on. "Boy, was it hard. Jobs were scarce then, especially for Jews. A lot of the ads had lines that no Jews should apply."
"I was one of the first Jews in the Post Office," boasted Max dolefully.
"Victor's older brother was one of the first Jewish cops," said Muriel. "The rest were all anti-Semitic. That's why he quit and went into the meat business."
"Every morning," said Rose, "the four of us, me and my friends Gertie, Beatie, and Edna, would go into the city to look. We were only eighteen. We would have to go to the agencies mainly, because they were the ones who had jobs to give, and they took a nice percentage of the pay. It was not an easy time for Jews, what with
114
first the Depression and then Hitler and all those anti-Semites here, and one big agency, I forget the name but they would let us wait around all day so we'd have a place to stay, would every once in a while announce that all Jews could go home, there'd be no work for us that day. All we even wanted was part-time work or a temporary job. So after that whenever I filled an application with an agency I would put down Protestant. I didn't even know what Protestant was but I Jjiew it was good. They all knew I was lying, with my looks, but -&ey didn't really care. At least then they could send me oui. At one of the employment agencies I finally got a temporary job for three weeks. Some job. The interviewer at the department store told me she knew I was Jewish. But she gave me the job anyway. Maybe she couldn't get anyone else to take it. The store was all the way in Newark, New Jersey, but it paid five dollars a day. It cost ten cents each way for the trolley and the train to go into the city and maybe a quarter more for lunch and a drink in the afternoon. It cost me an extra nickel each way to go into New Jersey with the Hudson Tubes. I would give my pay to Momma each day but most of the time she wouldn't take it all. She'd put some of it in my drawer for me to save." Rose, Gold reflected, was already ten years older than Momma had lived. "Sid was working at the Brighton Laundry with all those horses he was afraid of. Remember those horses, Sid?"
"I sure do. 'Watch out for those horses.' Mom would tell me every time I left the house."
"She worried all day long," Rose remembered. " 'Where does a Jew come to a horse?' she'd say, and shake her head so miserably. She worried about me too every day until I got home. It took me two hours to get to Newark from Coney Island and I had to stand in the department-store window and display some kind of a brush and mop with wax. It was a real bad day for me from the first one on, because people would stop and look. I didn't like being looked at but that was what I
115
was being paid for. Then I remembered we had relatives in Newark, most of Mamma's family lived in New Jersey, and I was so ashamed that one of them would pass and see me. I worked all day with my heart in my mouth. But five dollars a day was a lot of money then and would pay for a lot of new days of looking for work when that job ended. When I mopped I could do it with my back to the window but with the brush I had to look out at the street. I still don't know if any of them saw me but I was so afraid. I can still remen£fer the lunch all four of us had every day we jj^fifinto the city to look for work. There was arbig'cafeteria on West Forty-second Street. I think the name of it was the Pershing. Every day we ordered one order of corned-beef hash and four coffees."
"Was it as good as mine?" asked Muriel.
Rose threw her head back and raised her hands. "It was awful. We hated corned-beef hash, not yours, but it was the only thing that could be divided in four easily and was cheap and filling. We would all chip in for a pack of cigarettes and take five each. Then after lunch we would split up in twos and stand on the employment lines at the department stores or go back to the employment agencies to wait. There was Civil Service, but we didn't think we were smart enough or that they had any jobs we wanted. All we knew was typing and salesgirls. And we didn't want to leave home. In those days people didn't want to move away." Gold remembered her two children with a pang. But Rose, in the momentum of narration, was oblivious to the connection. "So we kept looking and then I got, before the law office, a job in one of the stores on Fourteenth Street, Hearn's. Selling behind the counter, and would probably still be there yet if the head of the floor wasn't a fanny pincher, and this used to kill me and the other girls too. So we made up and stood in a bunch one day and when he came squeezing through with his hands down I stuck a pin in him. He never knew who did it, but I felt he did or would find out and I was so afraid I
116
knew I couldn't stay there so I left when Momma said it was all right and began looking again. We walked miles all over the city every day just to save an extra five cents n carfare, but we were a happy bunch and had fun, corned-beef hash and all, and I made myself a promise one day that if I ever found a decent steady job I was never going to leave it, so when I found this steno job at the law firm, I stayed, and I've been there all this time. inever wanted to have to go looking for a job again."
^9Qy-two years," Max sulked, but with that same touch of mOfed pride. "And they start new girls out now a
t almost the same salary she's making."
"I don't care," Rose answered heartily. "They let me leave when I had the babies and let me work part time when I had to. I'm still afraid they're going to make me leave, and I'll have to go looking again."
"Now?" Max scoffed. "Now you wouldn't have to."
"I just hope I can stay until you can retire too. Maybe then we can get a condominium in Florida also, near Poppa and Gussie."
"Are in-laws allowed?" asked Irv, pushing through. "I want some coffee too."
Belle shooed them all outside the kitchen. When Dina, flanked by Esther and Belle, carried in the birthday cake, Gold felt like crying and feared he might run from the room. He was thankful the lights had been darkened for all those flickering candles. An extra one had been added for good luck.
"My Rosie," said Gold's father proudly, as all made ready to depart and she came to kiss him goodbye. "She was always the best one. She never gave me a minute's trouble."
"So fucking much in character," Gold grumbled. "To judge the whole human race by how much trouble we gave him."
She was also the one who had gotten least. Even Esther had fared better: little Mendy, though scrappy and opinionated, had been devoted to Esther and had left money at his death two years earlier, and both her
117
children, one in Boston and the other in Philadelphia, were upset that she still chose to live alone near Rose rather than with one or the other of them.
There were more large presents than Rose and Max could handle. Irv and Victor helped pack them, while Gold went back and forth for shopping bagjs. To Muriel's gift of a marked-down alligator purse Victor had added a dozen shell steaks and a pickled tongue. The grandest prize in the bunch was a Caribbean cruise, with spending money included. Sid had^aid most but all had chipped in and therefore^"could tell Harriet that the present had come IfOm the family. The Caribbean would be warm, whereas Europe would remind them of their son and California of their daughter. Neither Rose nor Max had ever been out of the country. They had not even been on a plane.
"I sure get a kick," Irv said to Gold, "out of the way you guys kid each other along."
Gold was appalled. Ho-ly shit. Was that the way they saw it?
"You three are a riot," Milt agreed.
By the time they were leaving, with all of the women but his stepmother and Muriel having pitched in, the dining room and kitchen had been cleared and the last pan scrubbed, and the last load of dishes was already groaning in the dishwasher. Gold, when a final worried hush fell, was able to allay their deepest fear and send them away in a mood of jubiliation.
"Bruce," Esther found nerve enough to ask at the door, while the others waited with glummest concern, "if you go to Washington, you wouldn't ever do anything to make us ashamed, would you?"
Gold was almost afraid to inquire. "Like what?"
Here Esther's courage failed, and others took over.
"Like ever vote Republican?"
"Never," he answered.
"Or help one get elected?"
"Of course not!"
"Not even if he was Jewish?"
"Especially."
118
"Thank God," said his stepmother.
"That Aunt Rose," said Dina, sitting cross-legged on Belle's bed. "I never saw her so happy. Did you ever heat het laugh and talk so much?"
"I'm glad I made the party," Belle said.
So was Gold. Belle was a good wife, and Gold guessed he might miss her if he ever decided he wanted one.
V
119
JfcLvERYTHING in Ralph Newsome's office in Washington had a bright shine but the seat of his pants. Gold had been greeted at the elevators by a young girl with a pretty face who turned him over to a stunning woman near thirty with straight black hair and a sheer, very expensive dress that clung bewitchingly to her incredibly supple figure, who conducted him at length to Ralph's secretary, a sunny, flirtatious woman of arresting sensual warmth who won his heart instantly with her seductive cordiality and caressing handshake. Everything in view gleamed with a polished intensity that made electric lighting, on these premises, seem superfluous.
Ralph had aged hardly at all. He was tall and straight, with languid movements, freckles, and reddish-brown hair parted on the side. What Gold remembered most clearly about Ralph was that he never needed a haircut or ever looked as though he'd had one. He wore a tapered, monogrammed shirt and his trousers looked freshly pressed. He was still,
120
awkwardly, "I have to be honest. You might have to get a better wife."
"Than Belle?" Gold was elated.
"Ym sorry." Ralph was solemn. "Belle would be okay for Labor or Agriculture. But not for Secretary of State or Defense."
"Belle and I have not been close," Gold confided.
"In that case I'm happy," said Ralph. 'Try someone tall t,hls time> Bruce. You're rather short, you know. It would aiJcHOJour stature if you had a tall wife."
"Wouldn't a tail, wife make me look smaller?" inquired Gold.
"No," said Ralph. "You would make her look taller. And that would add more to your stature and make her look smaller. Andrea Conover would be perfect."
"I'm seeing her tonight. Is she tall enough?"
"Oh, easily. And her father is a dying career diplomat with tons of money and the best connections. Propose."
"Tonight?" Gold demurred with a laugh. "I haven't seen her for seven years."
"So what?" Ralph laughed back in encouragement. "You can always get a divorce. Andrea's doing a great job with the Oversight Committee on Government Expenditures. She's the reason we can't make personal phone calls any more. You know, Bruce—" Gold rose when Ralph did—"these are really our golden years, that period when men like us are appealing to all classes of women between sixteen and sixty-five. I hope you're making the most of them. A lot of them go for your kind."
"My kind?" Whatever currents of euphoria had been coursing through Gold's veins congealed.
"Yes," said Ralph.
"What do you mean by my kind?" Gold asked Ralph.
"The kind of person you are, Bruce. Why?"
"As opposed to what other kinds, Ralph?"
"The kinds of person you aren't, Bruce. Why do you ask?"
125
"Oh, never mind," said Gold and then decided to take the inky plunge. "Lieberman thinks you're anti-Semitic."
Ralph was stunned. "Me?" His voice was hurt and astonished. "Bruce, I would feel just awful if I thought I ever did or said a single thing to give you that impression." *
Ralph was sincere and Gold was contrite. Y^u haven't, Ralph. I'm sorry I brought it up." ^^^^
"Thank you, Bruce." Ralph was plac&tgtf, and his handsome face fairly shone wv$r grace when he grinned. "Why, I copied your papers at Columbia. You practically put me through graduate school. It's just that I really don't feel Lieberman is an especially nice person."
"He isn't." Gold laughed. "And I've known him all my life."
The strain gone, Ralph said, "Let me take these notes to Dusty and have her type them up. We've really covered a lot of ground today, haven't we?"
Gold was not certain, but never in his lifetime had he felt more sanguine about his prospects. He glanced out the window at official Washington and caught a glimpse of heaven. Through the doorway, the view of the open office space was a soothing pastoral, with vistas of modular desks dozing tranquilly under indirect fluorescent lighting that never flickered; there were shoulder-high partitions of translucent glass, other offices across the way as imposing as Ralph's, and the dreamlike stirrings of contented people at work who were in every respect impeccable. The women all were sunny and chic—not a single one was overweight—the men wore jackets and ties, and every trouser leg was properly creased. If there was a worm at the core in this Garden of Eden, it escaped the cynical inspection of Gold, who could find detritus and incipient decay everywhere. Gold could look through a grapefruit and tell if it was pink.
"You'l
l like it here, won't you?" said Ralph, reading his mind.
126
"Is it always like this?"
"Oh, yes," Ralph assured him. "It's always like this when it's this way."
Gold succeeded in speaking without sarcasm. "How is it when it isn't?" "Isn't what, Bruce?" "This way." "Different." uxTn what way, Ralph?"
"IndifjSSg^ waYs> Bruce, unless they're the same, in which case it'strliS-^ay."
"Ralph," Gold had to ask, "don't people here laugh or smile when you talk that way?"
"What way, Bruce?"
"You seem to qualify or contradict all your statements."
"Do I?" Ralph considered the matter intently. "Maybe I do seem a bit oxymoronic at times. I think everyone here talks that way. Maybe we're all oxymoronic. One time, though, at a high-level meeting, I did say something everyone thought was funny. 'Let's build some death camps,' I said. And everyone laughed. I still can't figure out why. I was being serious."
"I think it's time for me to go," said Gold.
"I'm afraid it is. I'd give just about anything to lunch with you, Bruce, but I can't pass up the chance to eat alone. It's a pity you can't stay through the weekend, although I can't see how that would make any difference. Alma would love to have you out to see her terrarium, but EUie would be upset."
"Alma?"
"My wife."
"What happened to Kelly?"
"I think you mean Ellie."
"Yes?"
"She got a year older, Bruce. And there was that thin scar from her Caesarean. Ellie would prefer that Alma and I don't start entertaining as a married couple until people first find out I've been divorced." To the blond
Good as Gold Page 11