Morris was still holding the Times, impaled against his ribs by his elbow. His hands were tucked into his jacket. Lou instinctively stepped between father and son. Jamie looked at his uncle and said, “Steven didn’t tell you this morning? I called and told him about what I was planning late last night.”
“No, well, yeah, he mentioned to me early this morning that you were thinking about crossing,” Lou said. He turned his head away from Morris, to speak confidentially. “But Jamie, look, I thought you were just pissed off about what happened at dinner. I wasn’t going to say anything to your dad because I figured you’d get a good night’s sleep and realize, you know, this is crazy.”
He tried to steer Jamie toward the street, a few feet away from Morris. And better yet, a little farther from the front door.
“This will kill him, I’m telling you,” Lou said. “It’ll just about kill him, and especially if you cross this line out here in front of everyone.”
“Uncle Lou, this is not about him. It’s about me, what I need.”
“You need to be out here with us, not up there,” Lou said, gesturing with his head. “Jamie, come on, you want to be, you know, a goddamned scab?”
“I just want to be a guy with a job, a career, money in my pocket. Uncle Lou, we’ve lost already. The paper is out. People are buying it. The sportswriters are back to work and so are some of the others. You know what I’m saying? It’s one thing to be out here if the paper’s not being published. What are you going to do, stand out here forever? My father’s got a couple of more years of working before he retires. He’s at the end of his career. And neither of you has any idea what’s going on with Karyn and Aaron right now. Not that he would give a crap anyway.”
“Stevie’s out. Do you think he thinks he’s throwing away his career?”
Jamie shook his head. “We went through this last night. I’m not him. He’s a columnist. He’s a star. He can get a job anywhere. I’ve written one decent story in my life that got any attention—and everyone hated me for that. If I lose this job, what the hell do I send Karyn to support my son?”
Lou glanced back nervously at Morris. He noticed the gathering crowd. He looked around for Steven, for his son’s help, his natural way with words. He’d been here a minute ago. Now where the hell had he gone off to?
“Jamie, you won’t lose your job, I guarantee you, don’t do this,” Lou said. He couldn’t think of anything more promising or persuasive. Jamie shook his uncle off, moved back toward his father.
“Dad…”
Morris’ grayish eyes were on him but they were cold and distant, unresponsive and possibly homicidal. He read the panic on Lou’s face, watched him grow frantic just as he did when they were kids and a crisis would erupt without warning when the old man was at home.
“Jamie…” Lou persisted, his hand on Jamie’s shoulder again. He tried to pull him away. Jamie shook him off to face his father.
“Dad, this is something I just have to do, for me.”
Jamie waited but elicited only more silence.
“For Aaron too. I just can’t afford to be out of work. I heard they’re already replacing reporters. If I don’t go in now…”
“Jamie, they’re just trying to scare you,” Lou said from behind.
Morris said nothing. Jamie met his glare. For a fleeting moment, he thought his father’s lower lip had trembled. Now they were pursed again, as tightly as if they’d been nailed shut.
Jamie thought of just walking off. The revolving door to the Trib lobby was no more than twenty feet away. He thought, Enough of this, it’s my decision, why should I have to explain anything to him or anyone else.
So what was he waiting for? Permission? Good luck. Understanding? Forget it.
What was the point of this impromptu summit? He honestly couldn’t say. But for reasons he was too panicked to discern, he had promised himself that he would do this publicly. Even if his father was guarding the building, he was determined to cross like a man.
Now he was rooted to his position, to his cause, even if it seemed so unnatural for him to finally have one.
Am I doing the right thing? Should I have talked this out with someone first?
Jamie had asked himself those questions on the way to the building. But he knew if he postponed the plan he would probably never execute it. He—or someone else—would talk him into a sense of inertia. He would be one more powerless union drone.
Fuck the union. He’d gone to bed and woke up thinking that. But even as he sat on the subway and steeled himself for what was to come, he realized he had not actually spoken those treasonous words until…
“Fuck the union, okay, Dad?”
“Jamie, come on!” Lou said.
It had come out spasmodically, a Tourette’s moment, too fast and too late to recall.
“Is that what you want me to say?” Jamie said. “Is that what it will take for you to stop standing there and say one stinking word to me?”
Morris continued his commitment to a state of statuesque dispassion. His right hand, having slipped from his pocket while the newspaper remained trapped in the armpit, was slowly, unconsciously, balling itself into a fist.
“And fuck you too, Dad, okay?”
This time, the defiance was expressed in more of a whisper.
His eyes already welling with tears, Jamie felt the gaze of others upon him. Though the strikers had kept their distance and probably couldn’t hear what was said, they still were witnessing a spectacle—the kind reporters had routinely covered from behind police lines, from the perimeter, straining for whatever nuggets of information they could extract.
Surely they had not heard the words, fuck, you, too and Dad that echoed around Morris and Jamie in the chilly morning air. The street was suddenly devoid of noise, of movement, as if all traffic on the highway had rubbernecked at the sight of the Kramer family dysfunction.
Who else was watching? When Jamie veered from his father’s glare, glancing up at the third-floor windows of the Trib newsroom, he swore he could see eyes peering down at him.
Probably an illusion of sunlight, he thought. Don’t get paranoid now.
He reminded himself to focus on what he’d come for. He had made his stand, his rehearsed speech, and punctuated it with an ample dose of adolescent rage. There apparently would be no response from Morris, professional or paternal, pitying or punitive. Sorry, time’s up and here was the final Jeopardy question: who is about to become the first male Kramer to cross the forbidden family line?
Jamie supposed they were right about him. But as usual, not quite sure of himself, he left room for the possibility that they were all full of shit. And in the end, he thought: Nothing else matters besides Aaron. That’s who I’m worried about. That’s why I’m standing here.
He looked down at his left foot, tapping—or twitching—a steady beat against the ground. Move one step laterally and then go forward. The path to the door would be unimpeded. His left foot curled onto its toes. His shoulder leaned in that direction.
When he was a clerk hanging around the office late at night, a couple of crusty sports department holdovers from the halcyon era of boxing would invariably ramble on about axiomatic “hit-‘em-when-they’re-moving-forward” punches. Like Ali all those years ago against Sonny Liston up in some nowhere town in the middle of Maine. Hours later, when there was time to recount this sad episode, frame by frame, Jamie would consider the gravitational mystery, conclude that while he had leaned toward the door, his weight had indeed shifted, his body following the lead of his brain.
Absolutely, he was going in of his own volition—and not the way it would come to look to everyone on the street, as a humiliating run for cover.
When his eyes had left his father, Morris’ right hand had been concealed. He never anticipated or even imagined the hand propelling itself until it was too late. It was upon Jamie’s left cheek with the momentum of a punch-in-the-making before fist yielded to palm. Jamie got off lightly, perhaps becaus
e Morris had long ago vowed he would never cross the line his own father had too often gone hurtling across. He would never hit his child.
He couldn’t stop himself this time.
How long had Jamie looked away? A second, maybe two, but that was enough. He glanced at his father out of the corner of his right eye, saw the newspaper fall, felt the sudden sting of the calloused fingers meeting his cheek. They swept across the bridge of his nose before he stumbled, tried to grab hold of Morris for support. Jamie flailed with his right hand and scratched his father with a fingernail above the left eye as he fell back. And down.
On his back, Jamie could feel his father's surge of satisfaction. Another union mission completed. Mutinous son halted, consigned to his rightful place, ceremoniously dumped on his impudent ass.
From this position, this angle, there was less reflection and, yes, those actually were faces pressing against the newsroom windows. Like the strikers in the street, they were witnesses to Jamie’s rise against his old man—and swift fall. He sensed movement all around him now. He heard the murmurs. He looked up at the rage and maybe something else—sorrow, perhaps?—in the eyes of his father.
Sorrow for striking his son in a crowd, in broad daylight? Or for the biological role he had played in the production of this drama?
Tears spilled down Jamie’s cheeks. There could be no bluffing anymore, if that’s what he had been doing in the first place. No more cries for attention. No more options.
I’ve got to go. Got to go now.
Events were blurring into a progression of circumstances beyond his control. It was time to leave without saying another word. The way it had been when Jamie had arrived at the hospital two years ago, too late for the birth of his son. Karyn’s aunt had delivered her request that he seek new lodging. That’s when he had discovered the consequences of decisiveness and conviction.
You make your move. You live with the results.
He momentarily convinced himself: I got what I came here for. I made him pay attention to me. I stood up to him. Now get up. Get up and walk through that door.
Jamie put his palms to the ground and pushed himself up. He adjusted his glasses. He felt for the strap of his bag still attached to his right shoulder, just as it had been the night he regretfully took one for the team.
He forged his way forward. In an instant he was across the line, through the front door, away from his father, whose team he no longer wished to be on.
Chapter Nineteen
The video camera stayed on Morris after Jamie had gone. Debbie Givens nudged her cameraman forward, as best she could a man who was almost a foot taller and more than a hundred pounds heavier.
The redness in Morris’ face was gradually losing out to a more sickly pallor. Most of the strikers began to back away, return to the monotony of the line. With the crowd largely dispersed, Lou suddenly noticed the camera trained on his brother’s face.
“What the hell are you doing with that?” he said.
Givens pinched the cameraman’s jacket so hard that she could feel his love handle. “Stay with it,” she whispered as Lou moved closer. “Stay with it, just stay…with…it!”
Lou held a hand up to the lens. The cameraman backed off but held the shot. For a moment it appeared that Lou was about to wrestle for possession of the equipment, but he spotted his son behind the blonde.
“Stevie, help me here.”
Steven stepped forward, cautiously. “Come on, we don’t want any problems,” he said, without making clear who he was addressing the appeal to.
The cameraman scrunched his face, tilted his head.
“I thought you said…”
“It’s all right, why don’t you just go now?” Steven said. He turned back to Lou. “Dad, they’re reporters, doing their job. Something like this happens in front of them…”
“You mean they’re going to put this shit on TV?” Lou said.
“They were here to interview our people on the line,” Steven said. “It’s not their fault Jamie showed up and Uncle Mo had to smack him.”
Lou stared at Steven, disappointed, trying to think of a response. He settled on, “Just get them the hell out of here before I…”
He turned back to his brother. Morris had bent down to pick up his newspaper and was busily rearranging the sections, refolding, frustrated by pages falling, nonetheless grateful to have something to do with his trembling hands.
“This damn Times,” he said. “It’s so clumsy you can’t keep it in one piece.”
“Mo, let’s go,” Lou said. He noticed the clotting above his brother’s eye. Pointing a finger at his own brow, he added: “You’ve got a little blood there…”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Lou nodded. He glanced back at the crowd, sliding his arm around Morris’ shoulder.
Morris said nothing, for once inclined to have Lou guide him. They walked toward the corner. It wasn’t until they had turned, out of sight from the others, that Lou could bring himself to look Morris in the eyes.
Holy shit, his brother, the rock, the most grounded person he knew, was openly unmoored. Practically in tears.
“What the hell did I just do here? I hit him in front of the whole damned street.”
“Mo, I heard what he said to you. It wasn’t right.”
“I never touched one of my kids. And there were times…not with Becky…but this one…believe me.”
“I know, Mo,” Lou said.
He patted his brother’s shoulder, uncomfortable leaving his hand there and—really—with the entire role reversal. How many times had Morris sat with him in the kitchen as Lou unburdened himself of the fury and sorrow following one of his ex-wife’s binges—binges that had left her vomiting in the bathroom in the wee morning hours? She’d stay bedridden into the mid-afternoon, cotton-mouthed and curled up in the fetal position, demanding ice water.
“What should I do with her, Mo?” Lou would beg his brother. “Please, tell me what to do?”
“She needs help, professional help,” Mo would say.
But Marge would swear on her mother’s life to reform. She would behave herself for a week or ten days, as much as a month, before slipping out again at night while Lou was at work and Steven was preoccupied. The pattern repeated itself until the night she never returned, not even to pack. She called drunk almost a year later from a bar in North Miami Beach. She told Lou to send her a particular dress and pair of shoes he had already tossed in the trash with the rest of her things.
“I always knew I couldn’t hit him though,” Morris said. “With my temper, after the way Dad would lose it with me. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” Lou said. “Dad was pretty bad. I remember crying like a baby whenever he went after you. And he would come out with his belt hanging out of his hand and say, ‘And you, little shit, act up, you get the same thing, understand?’ ”
Lou let the thought dangle. “Course, it was the booze. He never remembered any of it the next day.”
“This kid, he always winds up doing the wrong thing,” Morris said, picking up the conversation he seemed to be having more with himself. “Married a nice girl, Jewish girl. I don’t know why they had to move all the way the hell out there but, okay, they have a baby, a house—what more did he need? And where does he wind up? By himself in that shithole of an apartment. The baby’s up in the country. He’s down here. I told Molly years ago when she wanted me to help him out at the paper. I said, ‘This is not a good idea. Not with this one. He needs to go find something else, on his own.’ She said, ‘Do something for him, he needs a break.’ And this is what I get back.”
“Mo, it’s not your fault. Jamie’s not a bad kid. He’s just …”
“He’s thirty-whatever, Louie, that’s the thing. He’s no kid anymore. He’s got one of his own…”
“He don’t understand.”
“What’s there to understand? Can you tell me what the hell there is to understand? I mean, cross a goddamn picket line? Our l
ine? His own line? Louie, I can’t believe. How could he even think…?”
Morris shook his head, rubbed the throbbing temple above his left ear, a tension headache coming on. Lou’s left hand remained on his shoulder. Morris lurched forward, too preoccupied by his son’s betrayal to think about where they were going. But on their present path there was only one possible destination.
Lou pulled open the door to Kelly’s and waited to let his brother in. He placed his hands gently on Morris’ back to guide him to the rear. Even at this early afternoon hour, the possibility remote that any other printers would be there, Lou silently prayed their regular table was vacant.
“Ayy, guys, we just opened.”
Kelly Murphy was always a welcome sight, but Morris had only eyes for the lone patron at the bar.
Gerry Colangelo, his back to Morris and Lou, was perched on a stool, unmistakable with his hair gleaming in the pale light. A half-empty draft was in front of him on the bar. Colangelo was too immersed in papers he was poring through to look up.
Lou again tried to prod his brother into the back, but Morris was unmovable.
“Not now,” Lou whispered. “Mo, you shouldn’t, not after what just happened.”
Morris raised his left index finger.
“One sec,” he said.
“Mo, please…”
Morris advanced to the bar, sat himself on the stool next to Colangelo. Lou waited, twenty feet away, unable to hear. Knowing Morris was not one inclined to drink at this time of day, Kelly sprayed Coke into a mug and set it in front of him. She looked up at Lou with a palm upturned. Lou shook his head. Tense and restless, he went to the bathroom, pushed his way into the stall. He dropped his pants and himself onto the cold toilet seat. The bathroom was as much a lifelong station of contemplative solitude for him as it was for Morris, the one good place where their drunken old man couldn’t get at them. He closed his eyes and lowered his head into his hands.
“Fuck,” he said.
Lou remained there for what seemed like an eternity, ten minutes in all. He knew he would have to jump at the first sound of commotion. But he heard none. An eerie silence prevailed. Curiosity overtook his fear. Maybe there was good news. Maybe he should join Morris at the bar, have a beer, order lunch. Maybe running into Colangelo would turn out to be a good thing, a distraction from Jamie. But when Lou got within view of the bar Kelly was alone, wiping it down.
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