Confused and miserable she turned to the one source of love that had always remained constant.
“I can hardly walk the stairs any more. It’s my varicose veins.”
“As soon as I’ve got some money I’ll move you out of here, so don’t worry about it.”
“Your father will have to come too.”
“If you want him to.”
“I’m glad you came home early.” She picked up his hand and kissed it. “You’re such a good boy, but nobody understands you.”
“You do.”
“I’m only an old woman. And I don’t count now.”
“Oh, Momma, you’ll always count first with me.”
She held the palm of his hand against her cheek as though it possessed magical properties and could remove the anguish of a life devoted to scrabbling after food, bearing children whom she held in contempt, and tied to a man whose sense of reality began and ended with himself.
“What do you want to say to me?”
“I made a mess.”
“I know you did. You have to clean it up. She’s got your child,” Celia said with an air of finality that closed off all argument. Jay had never paid much attention to the furnishings in the apartment, treating it always, with frustration and apathy, as a kind of flophouse, but tonight his attention was caught by a change. There were new drapes, vaguely herbaceous in pattern, a bridge table, secondhand, and something with extended ears - an inanimate spaniel that might be loosely classified by the Salvation Army as a sofa. He waved an arm around the room, his heart filled with dismay.
“What’s all this?”
“I’ve been saving. Nickels and dimes to try to furnish. God knows how long we’ll be here. Might even die here.”
“Don’t talk silly. As soon as I’m on my feet, I’ll have you in a decent apartment.”
“But in the meantime, we have to live.”
“I’ve got a better idea. You can move in with Rhoda and me. I signed a lease the other day for a place in Williamsburg. What do you say, Momma?”
“She wouldn’t like me on top of her - a new bride.”
“I couldn’t care less what she’d like.”
“You mustn’t feel that way.”
“I can’t help myself. I don’t love her, and there’s nothing that can change that. If we live to be a hundred, it won’t matter. I’ve got myself into this, and I’m drowning. But just because we’re getting married doesn’t mean I have to kid myself. I lie to other people, not myself.”
“She’s good for you. You’re gonna become something, Jake.”
“So she’s good for me . . .”
“You’ve got a start in life.”
“Yeah, but the end’s also the beginning. I feel like she should be a sister. I want other women, all the time. I can’t help myself. It comes over me, and I start to think I’m being swallowed up. I can’t give her enough of me, and she wants everything. Whenever I’m with her, her eyes, her hands, they’re all over me. It’s as though she’d like to eat my flesh, and the only way I can protect myself is to treat her bad - say horrible things. Everything that’s bad in me, rotten, comes out like from a sewer. But nothing stops her. She comes back for more with her fat sad face and her whining eyes, and all I want to do is vomit. I get sick to my stomach.”
“But she’s an attractive girl and she’s clean.”
“That’s the terrible part of it. I want her, and she attracts me, but then I feel as though I’m gonna die. I’d be happy to live with her and also have my own life. Personal. Nothing to make me responsible. Oh, God, I don’t know how to explain it, Momma. But there’s this awful goodness in her and it moves out to me like a snake and I’m afraid of it, and I hate it, and I want to make her see the world, people, me, the way it all is, and she won’t let me. If she would fight me, it would be better, but she gives in all the time, to everything, and when she gives in - this sounds crazy - I know she’s won. We do things my way . . . and it turns out to be her way, but without me realizing it.”
Celia Blackman held her head tightly with both hands, tears running down her cheeks, and she shuddered suddenly as though attempting to exorcise Jay’s demon.
“The child will make things better.”
“I don’t see how. It’ll make me worse because then I’ll be chained.”
“Oh, Jake, you don’t understand anything. It won’t make the marriage any better, but it’ll give you something to love. You need something to love. What’s between you and me won’t change, it’ll bring us closer. I’ll love it, ‘cause it’s yours, and it’ll be part of me, but we’ll have something that’s ours, that needs us.”
A short time later, Al came home. He had crept in quietly, his gum soles not making a sound, until he was behind Jay - just the corner of the wall separating them - and out of his mother’s line of vision. His short, squat body seemed to be designed for spying; a voyeur attending a forbidden intimacy.
Celia gasped when she caught sight of him.
“Aha, caught you. Planning a bank robbery,” he said with a heavy guffaw.
“You’ve frightened Momma, idiot.”
“One of these days, Jake,” he hinted darkly - the avenging angel.
“You’ll find a job?”
“I’ve got one, wise guy.”
“Pretzels two cents a throw or pickling corn beefs. The only thing you could do and that provided you swam would be as a lifeguard in a mikvah.”
“See, Momma, the way he talks to me,” Al whined. “The minute I got good news, too.”
“You shouldn’t sneak up like that, Al. It almost gave me heart failure.”
“I wanted to surprise you, but I didn’t know he was home.”
“You saw your poppa?”
“Yeah, he was outside Katz’s Delicatessen.”
“Planning a revolution?”
“No, trying to get work!”
“Jake, leave him alone.” Celia looked at Al expectantly. “Nu, what’s the news?”
Crestfallen he turned away, wishing that he could restart the scene without Jay there, take his mother in his arms, dance her round the room, and exclaim in an exultant voice that he had finally got the job he had been looking for.
“Rosen and Freed have given me a job as a bookkeeper.”
“What do they do, manufacture salamis?”
“No, big mouth, they’re the eleventh biggest firm of accountants in the whole of New York State. It means that I’ll be able to study for my C.P.A. exam at night school. I already signed on at City College.”
“Mazel tov,” Celia said.
“What are they paying you?”
“Not much to start with. Thirty-five dollars a month.”
“In another twenty years you might be making fifty a week at that rate.”
“It’s not a fortune . . .”
Jay laughed vindictively.
“What’s so funny?” Al countered, glaring at him.
“You, that’s what. You’re small potatoes, and you always will be.”
Al, both protesting and hoping for approval, regarded his mother, but she remained silent and averted her eyes; he had taken sides with his father too many times against her for the strangulated maternal feeling that struggled within her to come to the surface. She shared Jay’s opinion of him: a fool, and a lazy one at that, who was so susceptible to authority, not power, that he would agree to anything so long as his satellite function was reinforced. She enjoyed watching Jay prick holes in him, and because of this she secured additional fuel in the drama of self-immolation she figured in. What feeling she had once possessed for Al had been worn down, in the same way as a clerk wears down an eraser, in an attempt to correct mistakes.
“I can’t expect to start at the top, can I?” Al said defensively, but his mother had ceased to listen. Her eyes were riveted on Jay’s unhappy face. “But I’ve got a future. There’s no telling, once I’m a full-fledged accountant, how many pies I can get my fingers into. Most of the big business people in
industry don’t know a thing about the products they sell or make, but they’re accountants who know how to make books balance, how to cut losses. It’s an age of accountants.”
Jay took out a large bankroll, peeled off a five-dollar bill.
“Can you change this?” he said, offering it to Al who stared at it.
“No, sorry, I can’t.”
“Well, until you can, keep your trap shut about big business. You’re your father’s son, and the two of you just talk a good game. He’s always shooting his mouth off about millions too - that’s what he does with the rest of the bums in front of Katz’s - but one sensible idea about business he never had. Know what he thinks about when he looks out the window with his feet up? Well, I’ll tell you. He sees life passing him by, but he believes it’s not, and that down in the street he’s a king and everybody asks his advice. He’s running the world from that window of his and he sits there counting money that he never made - money that belongs to other people - and when he realizes what he’s doing, he hates everybody and since Momma is the easiest target he takes it out on her. He knows she won’t stand up to him any more, so she has to pay for his failure. You build him up, make him feel he’s something, and that’s why you’re the only one he can stand, but don’t make any mistake about him: he doesn’t love you any more than me and if you ever make something of yourself he’ll hate you for it because then you won’t be able to give him what he wants.”
“Jay, honestly, I don’t understand you. Nothing about you makes any sense to me. There’s something so rotten in your heart that I can’t believe we’re realty brothers. I only hope Rhoda can change you, but boy has she got her work cut out for her, and even though you only thought to introduce me to her once, she seems a nice person, and she doesn’t deserve a husband like you. I hope she can change you, ‘cause if she can’t, you’ll kill her.”
“That’s enough,” Celia shouted. “I can’t stand any more fighting. All we have is fighting. ‘Cause Jay’s making a living, everybody is jealous of him.”
“Momma, that’s not true,” Al protested. “We’re all happy about it. It’s the way he treats people, don’t you see? He’s got you buffaloed too, and all you do is yes him to death. He doesn’t need that, he needs somebody to set him straight. He’s using you.”
If Jay had had a gun, he would’ve shot him. Instead, he tried to counteract Al’s remarks, for he realized that his mother had been terribly upset by them.
“Momma, he resents me for one reason only: you love me. And he wants to take away the only thing we’ve ever had in our lives that means anything. Our love. And Poppa’s put him up to it. In a week, I’ll be out of here, and I hope Momma will be too. So you and the old man can eat each other up without us.”
“I’m not going, Jake,” Celia said without emotion.
“You think it over.”
“She’ll never leave him - not for you or anybody - ’cause she loves him. And everything you’ve done to make her feel different works only up to a certain point, but they’ve had a life together, and there are some things you can never touch.”
Jay took out a ten-dollar bill and put it on the table. He stood up and went over to Celia whose head was being supported by her hands, and kissed her and squeezed her against his body. “Buy what you want, Momma.” He picked up a small package that had rested at the foot of the table and opened it on the table. It contained a silk beaded evening gown. “From me to you . . . for the wedding.”
She ran her fingers over the silk and then kissed his hand.
“I’ve got to go now.” He picked up the ten-dollar bill and put it in her hand. “I love her” - he addressed Al – “and there’s nothing you can do about the way we feel.”
Jay had arranged to meet Douglas Fredericks, the landlord of the Fourteenth Street shop, at the office of his real estate broker. It was a small office with four desks, populated by three men who chewed cheap cigars, in between bites of sandwiches that lay spread out on wax paper, and who sipped coffee from cardboard containers. The windows were all tightly closed, and Jay wondered if the three of them slept there as well. Finally a bespectacled man came in wearing a Windsor knot the size of a large peach, a white-on-white shirt with a collar that needed turning, and a blue pinstripe double-breasted suit, the shoulders of which moved independently, as though a midget was inside and was operating them for some recondite purpose.
“What can I do for you, buddy?” the man said, biting into an egg-salad sandwich, most of which landed on his lap. “I’ve got an appointment to see Mr. Fredericks.”
The man examined his desk blotter and then put on another pair of thicker glasses that made him squint.
“You Blackman?” He gargled some coffee.
“That’s right, Jay Blackman.”
“You’re early. Mr. Fredericks said one o’clock.”
“I’ll be late next time, okay?”
“Joker, huh? Well, I hope you’re not wasting my time.”
“And who are you?”
“Warner.”
“Broker?”
“No, I’m a concert pianist.”
“Well, I’ll tell you something, Warner. I didn’t come here to have a shitassed rent collector ask me if I was a joker. I’m not one of the people in your tenements who’s come to ask for a paint job. “Clear?” he said politely.
“Now just a second” - Warner was on his feet and the egg salad fell on his shoe – “I don’t have to . . .”
“Sit down and wipe the egg off your shoe. We’re just using the office to discuss a lease. We could’ve discussed it anywhere - in the park. You get your commission from him, and he rents it at the price I’m prepared to pay, so your contribution is exactly nothing. So if I were you, I’d get back on the phone and dun a few old ladies for rent.”
At that moment, Douglas Fredericks entered. He was a tall, spare man wearing a pearl gray suit and navy suede shoes, with a black homburg under his arm.
“Would you be Mr. Blackman?”
Jay stood up and offered his hand.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“We spoke on the phone.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Good, then that’s settled. Can we pull up some chairs, Warner?”
Warner picked up two chairs and dragged them over. An errand boy, right approach, Jay thought.
“Now, have you seen the store?”
“I had a look through the window. It’s in a bad way.”
“That’s the tenant’s concern,” Fredericks said, smiling. “The location is excellent for the right type of business. About two hundred thousand people pass by there each day. And as it’s a six-day street - well I’ll leave the arithmetic to you.”
“All they do is pass by,” Jay said. “The store’s got no frontage. In fact, it’s almost invisible to the naked eye.”
“If you’re selling the right thing, people manage to find it.”
“You’ve got all the big department stores fifty yards away,” Warner tried to get in his two cents.
Cut his head off first shot, then he’ll keep quiet, Jay thought.
“Look, don’t tell me what’s obvious. The fact is the store’s small, difficult to see and is at the wrong end of Fourteenth Street. People cross the street - they don’t pass by the store. They wouldn’t look at that store if it had a fire going in it for a week. I’ll be honest with you: I had a talk with the present tenant.”
“A poor businessman.”
“To have taken the store?”
“Hardly that. He just doesn’t know how to run his business.”
“The shop’s a big gamble. Everyone who’s had it has gone bust.”
“So why do you want it?” Fredericks said.
“I’m a gambler. I think I might be able to make a go of it.”
“With what?”
“Dresses.”
“That’s a laugh,” Warner interposed. “The big guys’ll cut your throat in a month.”
“It’s a risk I
’m prepared to take.”
“The price is $600 per annum,” Fredericks said.
“I’ll give you $480 and you paint and put in a new window. You haven’t got the frontage in width so it’ll have to be eight feet on both sides in depth. That’ll give me 16 feet for window displays.”
“Your offer is out of line,” Fredericks said, a bit heatedly. Warner smiled.
“It’s not an offer, it’s a fair price. The store could be empty for six months. If I have a three-year lease at my price, you break even in terms of actual money, and you increase the value of your property by having it rented. If I build up a successful business, the value of the property can increase three or four times. If I go bust, you still haven’t lost anything. It’s entirely up to you, but remember one thing: we’re having a depression, and people are going out of business, not starting new ones. I can get a store anywhere in Manhattan, by just giving two months’ security, and they won’t even ask me to sign a lease. So what I’m offering you is security.”
“Get us some coffee,” Fredericks told Warner.
“Black for me, no sugar,” Jay said.
Warner glared at him, then left the room. The two other brokers eavesdropped on their conversation between phone calls and looked at Jay with a mixture of anxiety and contempt. He was so young, so able to spot weaknesses in arguments, pouncing like a beast of prey.
“You’re pretty tough for such a young man,” Fredericks said. “That’s a compliment.”
“Depends which side of the desk you’re sitting on.” Jay didn’t like the ironic tone and Fredericks’ patronizing manner. “I’m sure you’re a very clever man, Mr. Fredericks, but I don’t really think there’s much you can tell me about myself.”
“It’s a convincing performance” - Fredericks tapped Jay’s hand affably – “but it becomes obvious after a while.”
Jay got up.
“Sorry we’ve wasted each other’s time. Good luck.” He walked to the door.
“Oh, do sit down.”
Jay concealed the smile on his face, and when he turned around, he appeared surprised and impatient.
“I thought we’d finished,” he said.
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