“You get the hell out of here,” he shouted.
“What kind of hospital you running?”
“I’ll have you arrested if you don’t get out.”
“My kid! Something’s wrong with my kid.”
The doctor pointed to the door and Jay walked out. The doctor examined two dials attached to oxygen tanks, peered through the plastic hood, then closed it.
“Is he okay?” Jay demanded, grabbing the doctor’s sleeve.
“Yes. As if you give a damn!”
“Just who the hell do you think you’re talking to? I’m not a charity case. You people are guilty of criminal negligence.”
“Are we now?” Dr. Rosen measured him as though for a coffin. “Did you know we gave your wife ether?”
“So, get to the point.”
“People talk under ether - when they’re going under, and when they’re coming out of it. Your wife had quite a bit to say.” Jay’s face lost its color, and his mouth twitched. “In front of witnesses she talked: the anaesthetist, a nurse, and me. She kept saying: ‘Jay, don’t hit me . . . I’m pregnant. Jay I can’t get myself off the floor, help me. I’ve hit my head. Jay don’t leave me. Help me.’ Let me tell you something, tough guy, if anything had happened either to your wife or the baby, I would have reported the matter to the police. At the very least, you’re guilty of first-degree assault, but your wife has to make a complaint for the police to take action. In short, Mr. Blackman, I think you’re the worst shit I’ve come across in my life, and I’ve met a few unpleasant people in my day. And if I catch you around here, except during official visiting hours, I’ll report you to the hospital authorities and provide them with a complete report.”
Jay stumbled out of the hospital. He didn’t know where he walked, but after a few hours of aimless wandering he discovered he was in a bar on Second Avenue. He sat crouched in a booth by the men’s toilet. He was feeling no pain, and he stared at some money in front of him. He counted the money: six dollars in bills and some silver. He lurched to his feet and drifted over to the bar.
“You got the time?”
The bartender, a short beer barrel of a man with axle grease on his hair, held his watch to the light by the register.
“Seven o’clock.”
“How long’ve I been here?”
“Look, buddy, I’m not the official timekeeper counting for the knockdowns, I just sell booze.”
Jay returned to the table, scooped up his money, leaned on a small handrail that led up two steps to the street, and came out into a biting wind that almost blew him back downstairs. He watched a few people chase their hats across the street and hailed a taxi. He gave the driver his mother’s address and promptly fell asleep in the back. When he awoke, the taxi seemed to be rolling around like a light craft in a choppy sea. He paid off the driver on Delancey Street and then bought a bottle of rye at the corner liquor store. His legs were rubbery. He walked down the long crooked street and the wind coming up from the river had a gelid deathly touch in it that cut through him. Climbing the creaking stairs of his mother’s house, past the doors of inquisitive neighbors who when they recognized him smiled the smile accorded one of the locals who had made good, he thought his guts would cave in. He rapped on his mother’s door, and when she answered it, he stood for a moment peering into her doleful eyes, which revealed a degree of suffering he had never before noticed. She seemed frailer, and her arms stretched out towards him like broken twigs. He fell into her arms.
“Momma, what have I done? The baby’s gonna die because of me.”
“He’ll be all right.” She sat him down in his father’s chair. “It’s a good thing she had the phone number from the candy store. The super called me, and I went and got her.”
“Does Poppa know? Did you tell him?”
“No. I just said that I had to go with you to the hospital.” She stood by the window and stared into the street. “Jakie, what’s gonna be with you? She coulda died. Tell me why? You can’t hate her so much.”
“I can’t explain. She brings out the worst in me. I behave like an animal with her. I lose all control.”
“She said you had another woman and that you go out all the time with women. Is it true? Jake, Jake, answer me!” She pushed his slumping head up to the light, but he had passed out, his hand tightly clutching the bottle in the brown paper bag.
Faced with a problem too monstrous to solve, Jay abandoned any hope of a solution. He continued to cross wires in a desperate effort to hide Neal’s birth from Eva. He remembered alluding to Rhoda’s pregnancy when he had met her at Marty’s party, but as she never asked him about it, he kept quiet. Eva, who had a fine and sensitive grasp of character, already knew more about him than she was prepared to accept, but she could not keep away from him, and whenever he came, she was there, waiting, tense and aroused, for him to do as be pleased. She believed she loved him. Three weeks of his violence, his childlike need that drained her energy, had made it clear that her destiny, for what it was worth, had Jay as its focal point. Her relations with her husband had become static before Jay had come into her life, and now if she needed any justification for being a wife in name only, she had it; but as her husband was a man incapable of any kind of defense, a twig floating in a fast-moving mountain stream, he accepted his new position without complaint or comment. Jay had met him three times, giving spurious reasons each time for being with Eva, and Herbie had merely shaken his head, rolled his eyes passively, and looked away. Complications had increased Rhoda’s stay in the hospital to three weeks, and Jay used his liberty like a sailor coming ashore after an eight-month stretch at sea.
At three o’clock one morning, after an evening of heavy drinking and a tour that began at the St. Moritz and ended at the Copacabana, Jay finally brought Eva home. It was a shock to find Herbie sprawled on the sofa wearing a woolly bathrobe with unnaturally large shoulders that made him look like a jellyroll, a pile of Saturday Evening Posts by his side.
“You still up?” Eva asked.
“Yeah, a bit late for you, isn’t it?” Jay said.
“Couldn’t sleep.” He sat up and peered at them out of liquid brown eyes. His forehead was decorated with sweat beads, and when he lowered his head, he showed a perfect isthmus of pink scalp.
“How’s tricks, Herbie? Let’s see, you’re pushing off tomorrow to where did you say, Eva?”
“Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s his southern route.”
“You need your sleep, Herbie. That’s a long drive.”
“Where’ve you been?” he said, lighting a cigarette with a shaking hand.
“We had a business conference with Marty. Jay’s opening two more stores next month.”
Herbie nodded his head and blinked, as though the light was too strong.
“Smells like it.”
“Well, we had a few drinks; anything wrong with that?” Jay said defiantly.
“Big businessman.”
“I’m doing all right. Why, you want a job? Maybe I can find something for you.”
Eva giggled drunkenly.
“He could get the coffee and sandwiches for the girls.”
“Hey, that’s a great idea. It’s worth at least a sawbuck a week. What do you say, huh?”
“What’s the matter with you, Eva? I think I’m entitled to an explanation.”
“Here, have a drink, it’ll settle your nerves.” She handed him four fingers of rye.
“I don’t want a drink.”
“Sure, have one, your balls are in an uproar,” Jay said.
“Don’t use expressions like that in front of my wife.”
“I don’t object. It’s colorful.”
“I suppose the people you work with all talk dirty in front of you.”
“What if they do?” Jay interjected. “If you made a living, she wouldn’t have to go out to work and hear all those nasty words.”
“She could manage on what I make . . . if she wanted to.”
“And do what? Liv
e on peanut-butter sandwiches all week.”
“Maybe you haven’t heard that we’re having a depression. No one’s making money.”
Eva pointed her almost empty glass at Jay and said proudly: “Jay is. Nothing stops him, bad times, good times. He’s got the golden touch.”
“That’s reassuring.” He cocked a finger at Jay. “Look, Blackman, I want you to leave my wife alone. From what I hear, you’re married. So if you want to cheat, find somebody else. Not my wife. Do you understand or are you too drunk?”
“That’s a pretty serious accusation. I don’t care what you say about me, but you should have a little respect for your wife.”
“Like you do?”
“I don’t think I like your tone, Herbie. Jay’s a friend of mine, and he does a lot of business with us. Business, that’s what I get a commission on.”
He looked from one to the other - the Lady or the Tiger - and in a quavery voice said: “That doesn’t mean you have to become a whore.”
“Hey, listen, you little shitheeler, if you were a bit bigger I’d put you through that wall, but I might kill you if I hit you. Eva can pack her bags anytime she feels like it and take the kid with her. I’d set her up in an apartment tomorrow, but she’s too nice to leave you, so be grateful, and don’t take your complexes out on her.” Jay waited for the silence to explode, but the argument seemed to drain all the color from Herbie’s face, and he shook his head disconsolately.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything. It’s just that I never see her much, and I’m going on the road for six weeks.” Pathetically he held out his hand to Jay. “No hard feelings. It just looked funny seeing you and Eva together so much.”
“Okay, okay, Herbert, but don’t get any ideas. It’s strictly business.” Jay shook hands with him and couldn’t quite believe that he had foxed him so easily. He wondered uneasily on his way down to the car if Herbie had allowed himself to be tricked, and then dismissed it from his mind. He drove home slowly; he had to find a way out, before Rhoda and Neal came home.
The next day when he got home from the store he thought he heard someone moving around in the apartment. He put his ear to the door, heard the bath running, and the radio blaring something heavy and classical. He opened the door silently, crept into the passage on tiptoe, both fists clenched, prepared to fight. A voice, a female voice, trilled along with the music. He loosened his tie and removed his jacket, flinging both down on a dusty chair that was a repository of a month’s supply of newspapers. The voice was in the bathroom, and he eased the door open.
“What . . . ?”
“Christ, you scared the life out of me.”
“Well, Myrna. Can’t say I expected to find you in the toilet.”
The air was heavy with disinfectant and Jay held his nose.
“Rhoda gave me the key, so I thought I’d give it a quick clean before she came home.”
“You’re too good to be true.”
She glared at him, her eyes hesitant and a bit frightened.
“A goodwill gesture?”
“Whatever you like. I could hardly expect Rhoda to start cleaning the minute she walked through the door.”
“It must be something more to make you come up here!”
“Like a jungle here. Who’s been eating all the bananas?”
“Monkeys. Didn’t Rhoda tell you I keep three monkeys? Gotta lock them in a closet when I leave. We play poker when I get home.”
“Same old Jay.”
“You want to be friends, don’t you? You want to be forgiven,” he added.
“Oh, boy, you’ve still got a God complex.” She brushed her hair back with the back of her hand and sighed. “Money hasn’t improved your disposition one bit.”
“Hey, you’re going to pick a fight. I don’t want to fight with you and I only said what I did because we ought to clear the air. You dropped me in the shit with your family and anything I do, not that I intend doing much, won’t make them like me any better. You stuck your nose into somebody else’s life and changed that life, so I’m entitled to a beef.”
“You never would’ve married Rhoda, if I didn’t butt in,” she said a bit forlornly.
“Of course I would’ve. I had to, didn’t I?”
“It didn’t look like that from where I was sitting.”
He put out his hand, and she looked at it for a moment, puzzled and unsure of herself.
“C’mon, shake. I’m not gonna throw you over my back.”
She smiled uncertainly and extended her hand. He could see how attractive she had been when she was younger. Her figure was still good. It had set like plaster of Paris, but the shape, the allusion to an earlier grace, still remained. Rhoda, a later model from the same mold, had a coarseness that Myrna had avoided. She had a firm nose, hooked in structure, but not exaggerated, and finely stranded hair done in a bun that had a silky sheen in sunlight and was by turns reddish and brunet. Her face had an alertness and a fine sense of intelligence that because of bitterness and her wary attitude towards people never quite relaxed. Her laugh sounded like a jeer. When Jay held her hand for a minute, she became sullen and cautious.
“I’ve still got a lot to do. Kitchen floor needs scrubbing.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, you don’t have to bother.”
“I always finish what I start.”
“Hey, what’re you doing for dinner? Date or something?”
“Don’t be sarcastic.” She flushed and flung her hands in the air.
“Wait a minute. You take everything the wrong way. I was only trying to be nice.”
“It’s difficult to tell with you.”
“What I thought was we could have a deli dinner. There’s a good one down the block. I could get some hot dogs, corned beef, anything you like, and we’d eat here when you want.”
She raised her eyebrows, and her chary expression turned into a full smile. He patted her shoulder amicably.
“What do you say, huh?”
“That sounds swell. But honestly if you’ve got other plans I don’t want you to change them for me. Rhoda says you’re busy trying to get two new stores into shape.”
“Not tonight. I’m knocked out.”
She considered the proposition as though her future hung in the balance, and one false move would mean irrevocable bondage.
“Be an executive, make a quick decision.”
“Yes, then.” A great load had been lifted.
On his way out, Jay saw a rectangular black leather case. He studied it curiously for a moment, then opened it. Inside he found a clarinet, dismantled, and like a child, unable to keep away from a strange object, he began to assemble it. He laughed guiltily to himself, then went to the mirror, stuck it in his mouth and blew with all his strength. A strange muted duck call was emitted from the instrument, and his cheeks became inflated once more as he tried to blow it. In the mirror, he saw Myrna approach him, her face white and tense, and her hands shaking while she tried to control her anger.
“Please, please stop it.”
“I was only kidding around.”
“You mustn’t touch it.” She took it from him, her eyes panicky and suddenly feverish.
“I didn’t break it or anything. Just wanted to try blowing it.”
She took a red cloth out of the black case and gently, with deft, loving strokes, began to polish it.
“You shouldn’t have touched it.”
“Did I get germs on it?”
She seemed hypnotized.
“Germs? I’m not sure.”
“I thought you gave it up?”
She came over to him and in a lost, faraway voice whispered conspiratorially: “Please don’t tell anyone. I’ve started taking lessons again.”
He was puzzled and uncomfortable and sorry for her. He touched her face with his fingers, and she shrank away into a corner.
“I’ve found a wonderful teacher. She’s at the Juilliard School of Music.”
“Oh? Well, I’ll forget that you told m
e,” he said at last in some confusion.
On the way to the delicatessen, he telephoned Eva and learned with some irritation that she could not see him because her mother was spending the evening with her. She sounded remote, and Jay was troubled and disgruntled and accused her of duplicity. She swore at him, and he slammed the receiver down and bought a bottle of rye to assuage his virulent anger. When he returned, Myrna came to the door with an expansive smile and an air of passionate reunion. She had used the time to comb her hair and had put on fresh make-up. Jay sniffed her perfume, which had a touch of jasmine in it, and was glad he had come back to someone. The prospect of a night alone terrified him. He opened the bottle of rye and poured huge drinks, mixing them with ginger ale. They clinked glasses like confidantes of long standing and Jay enjoyed the sense of intimacy and friendliness. Her mood had changed from one of saturnine resignation to one of almost insouciant gaiety, and the alteration had been smooth so that he could not even refer to it without sounding foolish.
“What a spread!” she said with delight as she put the cold meats on a platter. She opened up a cardboard container and shrieked with delight. “This is silly, but what possessed you to buy so much cole slaw? Did I ask you for it?”
He threw back his head and laughed.
“Remember that dinner at your house?”
“How could anyone forget it?”
“The only thing you ate was cole slaw. In between screams from your father I kept watching you eat it all up. I wanted to tell everybody how funny I thought that was, but I lost my temper before I got a chance.”
She wrinkled up her nose and chuckled.
“God, what a case of nerves I had. And my lip hurt something awful. It was swollen for a week, and Poppa insisted that it was a bee bite and made me a concoction of vinegar and witch hazel to put on it. I couldn’t stand the smell.”
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